Streetwalkers, Wolves, and Coffee
by wewouldsputter
Summary: Enjolras/Éponine AU - It's 1967, and Enjolras is finally learning to forget his shameful past and starts work as a writer for a newspaper in Paris. But when he meets Éponine, a steelworker with more haunting secrets than she lets on, his life is turned upside down and the past he thought he had forgotten is suddenly chasing after him. Can he forget regret and learn to love again?
1. Chapter 1 - Forgetting

A/N: Hey guys! :-) This little plot bunny started gnawing at me last week, so I knew I had to get it out of my system! I have no idea how long this will be honestly, but I'm already almost done with chapter two! Definitely inspired by all of the fantastic É/E writers on here and on Tumblr! Particularly Concetta, who writes the best fanfic I have read to date. If you have the time, go read "Our Little Lives!" Then message me. I need someone to fangirl about it with ;-) One other thing, I have very little knowledge of France so don't judge too hard on that aspect of things! I only know what I have read of it, which isn't much. Anyway, on with the story!

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**CHAPTER ONE | FORGETTING**

Enjolras' flat was silent, save for the crackling fire that blazed in the fireplace across the room. It filled the apartment with a sense of warmth that he took for granted. He laid across the comfortable couch, a book open on his chest with his head back on the armrest and his feet kicked up on the other. One slipper had fallen off in his sleep.

A small cat was curled up across the room, all gray and furry and comfortable in a plush bed spun from sheep's wool. In the kitchen, a bowl of dry food and water sat cleanly beside the refrigerator, which was stocked with wine and bread and fresh vegetables.

The apartment was bare, otherwise. Not that one would think it distasteful, because the walls were all painted a warm beige and the hardwood floors were shined; every appliance appeared new, and the furniture was tidy.

And yet, it was all too clean. The art hanging on the walls was very ordinary, the books on the shelf were mostly dictionaries, thesauri, and (many) books on the history of the inner-workings of France's government. In fact, the book that Enjolras had fallen asleep with was a historical autobiography about a man who participated in the French Revolution in the 1800s. And although Enjolras found these things interesting, it was all very plain and expected.

Snow was beginning to fall outside, and Christmas carols were being sung a block away. The heart of France at this time of year was one of the most comfortable places to be.

Enjolras stirred at the sound of the music outside, inhaling deeply as the foggy state of sleep wore off. Dark circles that used to line his eyes had faded to a dull shadow, barely visible unless he started to fall behind on his sleep again.

The memories of what happened years ago had begun to dissipate. The less he thought about it, the better. Life grew easier with each day that passed, marking the passage of time. Details slipped – their laughs, voices, the crinkle of their eyes when they drank too much – and the nighttime didn't seem to last as long.

"Tchk, tchk, tchk," he called softly, the small gray ball of sleeping fur starting at the sound before stretching and making its way toward the couch. It nuzzled against his hand, beginning to purr, then wandered off toward another dark corner of the house it could peacefully sleep in.

With a restful sigh, Enjolras sat up on the couch, stretching his long legs as he did so. The book that had once rested on his chest fell to the floor, which he picked up. He paced to the bookshelf and tucked it back in the place he had first retrieved it from.

And then he stood, with his hands rested on his waist, listening to the dull murmur of _Chants de Noël_. He moved to the window, leaning on it with one arm outstretched above his head; his hand pressed to the glass and created a foggy handprint. This was the winter of 1967, and never had a time in Enjolras' life been more peaceful.

Suddenly, the phone began to ring from the table beside the small television set. Enjolras hated the phone, but because of the constant threat that _it could be important_, he begrudgingly answered it.

"_Bonsoir_," he answered quickly, already annoyed.

"Ah, Enjolras," the thick voice of his boss, Henri Dupont, echoed. "_Bonsoir_, I take it you are well?"

"Most well," he replied, although he wasn't one for small talk. "What is the nature of your call?"

A hearty laugh erupted through the receiver, as though Dupont could tell Enjolras did not like being disturbed so late at night – particularly by phone. "My boy, you've got to learn to work on your over-the-phone manners! Anyhow, I have a story I'd like you to start work on first thing in the morning." A quick pause interrupted his words, and then came the shuffling of papers. "You remember _Monsieur_ Aimè, the proprietor of the new steel mill in Clamart? Well he's just called in response to us inquiring an interview, and I wanted you to see to it that you get a full column about the place in tomorrow's issue."

Enjolras was suddenly perplexed, trying to wrack his brain for any information about the place at all. He didn't get out of Paris much, as he worked at the _Le Figaro_, one of the more substantial papers issued daily in France. He couldn't remember anyone mentioning anything about a new steel mill recently, but he didn't often work on stories – he was more of a man "behind the scenes."

Perhaps that was why he was so surprised that Dupont was giving him a story – one with potential, one that could be great – a story about a town's economic prosperity because of a new mill full of employment opportunities. Families that would go fed instead of hungry. Warm, not frozen.

A memory flashed in his head.

Enjolras' eyes fluttered shut once before shaking it off. _Don't think too deep,_ he reminded himself. _It will just get worse. Don't go back to that place in '65._

"I'll take that silence as a good sign," Dupont chortled. "You're to be at the mill tomorrow, early as six o'clock, late as seven. They'll be expecting you."

The corners of his lips twitched upward. "I'll be there, _Monsieur_."

"Good."

_Click._

Slowly, Enjolras lowered the phone from his ear and hung it back on the receiver. His smile widened, eclipsing his mouth in a broad grin. His teeth even showed a little. Two hands found his mass of blond, curly hair, tugging at it lightly, and he fell backward on the couch. The room's warm glow was catching, and his cheeks reddened a little.

For the first time in a long time, Enjolras felt hopeful.

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In Clamart, a waxing roar fell over the city. It was not a natural sound, as that of a lion or of some harsh wind whistling on a blustery day. People on the streets stopped, looking upward as if they would see what had caused the disruption. Briefly, the ground shook.

It was the sound of a factory's gears clenching, pausing work for a day. Gray rolls of steam and smoke billowed upward into the sky as an outpour of workers began to trickle out of the building's exits. These people were caked in dirt, from their feet to the underside of their fingernails to their faces. In contrast, their eyes appeared whiter than knuckles trying to grip the machinery inside the mill, trying to control it so it didn't make a swipe at their fingers.

Beneath the glow of a city falling asleep, a girl walked from the factory. Her dark hair was pinned back into a low bun with a few hairs pulled forward by the labors of the day. Her eyelids were halfway open as she pulled her tattered jacket closer to her chest.

The cobblestone streets were rough on her ankles; she had to watch her every step, keeping her eyes guided on the ground. She pretended not to notice the dirty looks that followed her home from girls with mod hairdos, looking like the American girls in fashion magazines. The long, sweeping hairstyles and flat-ironed bobs surrounding her felt suffocating.

Boys on bikes sped past her with wheels whipping loudly around and around and around. The night sky was dark, and in the distance, she could hear carolers singing "_Douce Nuit._" Hazy memories from her childhood rushed to the forefront of her mind, during Christmastime when she would find fifteen presents from _Père Noël_ beneath the tree. Back when her father would hold her in his lap and call her childish names that expressed endearment.

He would often still call her names, but these names were different.

She neared the apartment that smelled of cigarette smoke and garbage, the one at the front of the alleyway where homeless men slept in makeshift cardboard homes.

_Don't stare,_ she thought to herself mildly. _You could be him._

The few francs in her pocket crinkled as she gripped them tightly. Her other hand grabbed the doorknob to the apartment (which was almost always left unlocked) and jerked it roughly to the right on account of it being consistently caught.

"_Maman_," the girl, who couldn't yet be twenty, called to her mother. "I'm home."

Her mother was in the living room, a glass of cheap liquor clutched in her grip as she played a round of solitaire. After a moment had passed, a look of disgust grazed her face and she threw the cards into a pile on the carpet. From the corner, the sound of old, tinny harpsichords played a low and rueful melody on the record player.

"Welcome home, little _Madimoiselle_." Her tone held much irritation. "You got the money?" she asked sharply, not blinking or tearing her gaze away from the glass in her hand, which moved to swish the clear drink around. "Well? Hand it over."

Without thought, she handed over the money in her pocket – what little she had earned – and stepped back. Éponine's mother _tisk_ed as she the girl began to leave the room. "What the hell is this gonna buy?"

A sinking feeling entered Éponine's chest as she closed her bedroom door shut behind her. The carolers still rang in her ears, singing memories of old Christmastime when she wasn't caked in dirt and didn't have to give her parents money just to keep them all alive.

Her back leaned up against the door before slowly sliding down it to the floor. In the living room, she heard heavy footfalls and the gruff, familiar tone of her drunken father. His voice mingled with that of her mother, whose voices grew and grew until a loud slap intervened.

Éponine pinched her eyes shut.

_How can you remember when everyone around you makes it so easy to forget?_


	2. Chapter 2 - The Girl at the Mill

I cannot stop writing this! The É/E ship is taking over my life! Anyway, another thing I thought I might mention is that I changed the dates a little, so instead of '66, it is now set in '67. This change is crucial in the direction of this story even though it's just one year, haha. Please comment if you enjoyed it! I know it's long, but it needed to be, trust me. :-)

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**CHAPTER TWO | THE GIRL AT THE MILL**

He was going to be late.

The bathroom was filled with a hazy steam which had emitted from the scalding hot water spurting from the shower head. Enjolras pulled back the curtain before tugging a towel around his waist. Leaning over the sink, he wiped at the foggy mirror with his forearm.

He quickly brushed his teeth, ran a comb through his hair, and left the bathroom to finish getting ready. His flat was dark, save for the few lighted lamps around the living room. The darkness of a day just about to begin leaked in through the windows on the western side of the apartment.

Enjolras grabbed his things out of the drawer without caution or reason – a beige turtleneck, a crimson tweed jacket, a pair of gray trousers, and finally his eyeglasses that were perched upon the bedside table – and threw them on haphazardly. It was nearly seven o'clock.

"_Au revoir, Petit_," Enjolras called to the small gray cat as he headed out the door. He didn't expect a response from the lazy fur ball, so he shut the door tightly behind him and locked it promptly.

Down on the street outside of the apartments where he stayed, Enjolras unlocked his car and slid inside the 1960 Peugeot. He peeled quickly out onto the street that was already bustling from early morning traffic – not that he was surprised in the slightest. _Just one of the "perks" of living in Paris,_ he thought sardonically. There was much beeping and horn honking and fast stopping and chaos in the roads, but he had prepared for it. This morning, not even the God-awful drivers of France could dampen his mood. A tight-lipped smile had even planted itself on his face.

Clamart was easy enough to find, from Enjolras' previous knowledge of the country. It was close enough to Paris, and besides, he had gathered some directions upon sitting down with a map the previous night. The steel mill, on the other hand, took him some time to locate. It was new, and Dupont had not given him any indication of where it was at (not that he had ever asked for fear of sounding foolish to his boss). Eventually he gave up trying to logically find it and instead followed the long trail of gray smoke plowing through the sky. Like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the smog had led Enjolras straight to his destination: _Les Aciers de l'Aimè_, the steel mill run by Thibaut Aimè.

A parking lot with an attendant at the glass encasement near the entrance caught his eye. Enjolras headed toward it, paid his fee for daily parking, and entered the premises with haste.

He grabbed his leather shoulder bag, opening it once more just to be sure he had his notepad, pens, and tape recorder for the interviews he would be conducting. It was all there. He stepped from the car, shivering at the dreadful cold, and started toward the factory's entrance.

"Identification?" the man in police attire said at the front door.

"Of course," Enjolras replied, anxious yet certain, pulling out a press pass from a zippered encasement on the side of the bag. He handed it to the man who barely glanced at it before handing it back without thought. This factory was off-limits to any average man, but the officer in charge of security certainly didn't take his orders too seriously.

The guard nodded sharply once at him and let him pass. With a deep breath, Enjolras entered the large factory.

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"...And so I knew I had to do something to help these poor families," Louis Aimè concluded, his eyes transfixed on the recorder held in Enjolras' hand. "Not just for the sake of building upon the enterprise of steel, but by reusing old steel to create something new. Something meaningful. And it is the same way with these families – we are saving lives by simply offering new jobs. Creating something good from something that could have been discarded or written off."

"Fantastic," the boy murmured. _This interview could not have gone better if I had written it myself._

"It truly is," the man finished, his eyes meeting those of Enjolras. "And so we must continue to thrive, so that this country may continue to thrive." He paused, then smiled. "That is all."

Enjolras smiled, loosely fumbling with the recording device in his hands before finding the record button, pressing it, and stopping the interview. He slid it into his pocket and reached out for a handshake with Aimè.

"Thank you for your time, _Monsieur_," he thanked sincerely. "This is going to be a great issue today – and I shall bring you back a copy of it tomorrow for your own records."

The man, robust in nature and gentle in demeanor, took a seat at his desk and folded his hands on the hardwood tabletop. "Why, thank you, my boy! How good of you." Pausing only briefly, he looked to the door and then back to Enjolras. "And, off-the-record, I'm really very glad _Le Figaro_ thought it well to look into this place. _Les Aciers_ is doing more for these people than you know."

"I can only hope to know," the boy said, swinging his bag over his shoulder before standing from his seat across from Aimè. "Would it be alright if I interviewed a few of the workers?"

"Of course!" Aimè replied. "I shall have one of my assistants take you to the assembly stations and find you a voice." Calling down the hallway, his voice rose. "Beliveau!"

Suddenly, a man dressed in a business suit with a long black tie appeared at the door, slipping in through the cracked-open doorway. "You called, _Monsieur_?"

"Yes, Beliveau," Aimè quipped shortly, "please escort _Monsieur_ Enjolras to an assembly room, and see to it he has an audience with a few of the workers."

"_Oui_," Beliveau nodded, heading back out the door with a pointed look at Enjolras.

Before following him, the boy turned back once to Aimè. "Many thanks," he said once more, earning a smile and a nod from the man seated at the mahogany desk.

The door closed behind him, and with anticipation weighing heavy in each step, Enjolras made his way from the top floor of the mill to the ground level in which the workers were located. He could see them all swarmed around conveyor belts and heavy, metal machinery. In many rows, white sparks flew up into the air, clinging to the long-sleeve shirts and eye goggles each manipulator wore.

Beliveau took Enjolras across a high-up platform that wound around the three-floor-high area in which the workers were allotted to perform their tasks. From the platforms where they walked, nothing appeared individualized; like an army of ants, they knew their jobs and their colonies swarmed to complete them as quickly as possible. However, as they walked down a set of iron stairs, they made their way closer and closer to the ground level. Faces emerged from fuzziness, shimmering white sparks seemed bigger than they had from such a height, and hands and arms and bodies refocused. This was not a singular collective being, but in fact, individuals working together as one.

Beliveau explained to him what each of the sectors of the factory allowed the workers to perform. On the eastern side of the plant was where iron ore was reduced in a blast furnace, turning it to molten iron. On the southern, western, and northern fronts, steelmakers removed impurities from the iron, such as excess carbon and sulfur. Then, alloying elements were added, such as nickel and chromium, to produce the exact steel required. Finally, smack-dab in the center of it all, workers turned steel into slabs and sheets through casting, hot rolling, and cold rolling the newly formed steel.

It was a breathtaking scene, with so much action taking place at once. The liquid iron and the sheeted steel contrasted with the workers and their taxed expressions, making Enjolras step back for a moment and look at it all as parts of a whole, rather than the big picture.

Before he could open his mouth to say anything, Beliveau stopped him. "Follow me," he said, "and be careful not to touch anything."

Although it was just a simple warning, it sounded a bit more like a threat.

"Many workers here live in poverty," Beliveau told Enjolras in a hushed tone. He had to lean close to the man with slicked-back hair to hear what he said. "Almost all verge on animalistic from going through so many things in their lives, so if they snap at you, it isn't you. It's them – they're instinctual that way, I suppose." Enjolras glanced around, looking from man to man to (he couldn't believe it) woman, his eyes catching their own fierce ones, and felt a shiver crawl up his spine. Perhaps these people were from the poorer parts of France, but could they actually be so barbaric?

Beliveau stopped near one of the many blasters (which Enjolras seemed hesitant to approach) and called to a man. "Reynaud," he called loudly, his voice barely managing to rise above the sound of scorching iron. A man wearing a metal mask and heavy gloves turned around, startled and jumpy. He stepped toward Beliveau with his own sense of hesitancy and lifted the mask.

With graying facial hair and heavy eyebrows, this man had lived a tiring life. His eyes seemed as though they were about to shut and his face held a splotchy complexion. He didn't seem focused at all, so when he looked to Enjolras, a pang of guilt hit his stomach. _Begging, _his mind supplied the word. _The man looks as though he's begging for something – but for what?_

"Enjolras, this is Jérôme Reynaud," Beliveau stated. "Jérôme, this man is here conducting interviews for _Le Figaro,_ and would you be interested in an interview?"

The man smiled a little, which both surprised Enjolras and offered him some shred of relief. "Sure," Reynaud replied. His throat seemed raspy and dry and cracked. Beliveau took this as his time to exit the work room, leaving Enjolras to do his own bidding for a while before coming to retrieve him in a few hours. This was understandable, as everyone has work that needs to be done, which he knew and did not blame the man for...even if he _was_ rather lost at where to go next.

"Follow me," Enjolras told him finally, leading him up the stairs from whence he came until they arrived at the door to another staircase. "I can interview you here, if you like. It's much quieter than out there."

"Sure is," the man sighed, and as he did so, the tape recorder which had been jammed into Enjolras' pocket was extricated and held firmly. He pressed record.

The man went on a bit nervously, fiddling with his hands, "I'm probably not the best one for you to talk to about – what was it again?"

"The steel mill," Enjolras confirmed, "but let's back up. Where were you before you found work?"

Reynaud was a little jumpy. His answers came quick at first, short one or two word answers, until he began to forget about the tape recorder and simply focused on his own words. He talked of the places he worked as a young man, earning well-enough money to hold an entire family, but then he was let go and it became hard to find jobs. Over the years, he survived off of odd jobs around the city and working janitorial duties. However, he was soon let go again, resuming his job search seemingly endlessly. This was until the steel mill opened in Clamart, where he earned a little more than the janitor job and could finally be at peace that he was working in a stable environment – a job where he would not have to pray there would be enough money to quell his boys' aching stomachs.

"What is the work like?" Enjolras prompted.

Silence followed. The man didn't quite know what to say, and Enjolras noted something flashing in his eyes. It was so quick, however, that he couldn't place it and so wrote it off as a trick of the fluorescent lights in the stairwell.

"It is just work," the man said. "It helps pay the bills, so I'm thankful."

Reynaud seemed to be retreating back into himself, back into the place he had come from before the interview began. He was nervous and skittish and his hands started fumbling again. It was then that Enjolras knew the interview was over.

He clicked the record button once more with a thoughtful sigh. "Thank you for your interview," he said, offering his hand to shake.

It seemed as though Reynaud did not know what to make of the hand; his eyes were fixed on it, not moving unless to glance at one of his own. That was when Enjolras saw it – the scar across his knuckles that had before gone unnoticed. It was thick and peach, some parts of it still slightly red. _It looks fresh,_ Enjolras thought.

His hand fell to his side as he shook his head, clearing his thoughts. He thanked the man once again, who nodded once quickly, and led him back down the stairs toward the blasters. Reynaud went back to work without a second glance back at the boy, who pushed his thick-rimmed tortoise shell eyeglasses back up the bridge of his nose as if to see everything more clearly. And, still, he was left in somewhat of a fog. Something very confusing had happened in that stairwell, and although he couldn't seem to place what it was, he was left with a sour taste in his mouth, nonetheless.

_Round two,_ he thought contritely. His eyes scanned the overwhelming crowd around him before he thought it better to simply wander; if anyone caught his eye, he would stop them for an interview. That was his best idea at this point, because of his complete and utter inexperience with this aspect of the newspaper – the "going out and doing things" aspect, as it were, rather than the "sit around faxing things to business partners" sort.

Enjolras' eyes darted across the plant, careful not to touch or bump into anything or anyone as he maneuvered through rows of men and women working with the hot metal.

"Watch it," an older man spat. He had a balding head and two vicious boils on his neck. "Some of us are trying to work here, _bourgeois_."

"As am I, _Monsieur_," he assured, brushing past him. When he caught a look at the man's severe expression, he muttered a half-hearted apology in response. He continued along the line, often getting sidetracked by the processes in which those around him practiced.

It was not until he heard a voice coming just above the rubble and ruckus of the mill that he was snapped out of his distractedness.

Darting once more, Enjolras searched desperately for the voice. It was not soft, although a song so soft would be even more uncommon in such a place. Instead, the voice trilled with a raspiness and rawness that nearly melded with the melted iron.

"Tant que l'amour inondera mes matins / Tant que mon corps frémira sous tes mains / Peu m'importent les problèmes / Mon amour puisque tu m'aimes." _(As long as love will flood my mornings / As long as my body will quiver beneath your hands / The problems matter so little to me / My love, because you love me.)_

Before he had time to think, the tape recorder was in his hand, recording the song as he heard it with the sounds of the mill coursing through the words. _Where is it coming from?_ he wondered.

Enjolras' gaze settled on a girl with dark brown hair, lean and rigid in bone structure, and with sunken eyes that were brooding and drooped heavily. Her shirt, a youthful striped one with a once-white collar, was covered in dirt and frayed at its edges. Her fingernails had black surrounding them, the same black that was caked into her dirty brown hair. The girl couldn't have been more than eighteen years old, and yet she somehow looked fifty.

"'Ponine," one of the men across from her said huskily. Immediately, she stopped singing and looked up to see what he had said it for. His eyes flashed to Enjolras, and so hers too flickered to the boy. Her lips zipped shut tightly before going back to work. Her hands clutched on to glass bottles full of some sort of clear liquid, which she poured inside a holder of molten iron.

_She doesn't look old enough to work at a place such as this,_ Enjolras thought, somewhat annoyed. _Who allowed her to come here for work?_

Perhaps it was because she felt his prying eyes, but just as he passed her by she hissed something under her breath at him, causing those around her to smile mockingly at him.

He stopped, certain he had heard it. "Excuse me, _Mademoiselle_?"

She didn't look up at him, but rather continued on with her work as her tongue quickly felt along her front teeth. "I said nothing."

"But you _did_ say something," he flung back, pushing his bag higher up on his shoulder and out of the way as he stepped forward.

"Only to Pourlevaire," the girl replied sweetly, then turned back around to look at him. "But I could say it to you, as well, if you do so please to hear it."

Enjolras folded his arms across his chest, looking the girl up and down once more. Her everyday clothes were covered by no more than a smock, something he realized that everyone wore; their underclothes were nothing more than old ragged things they threw on to dirty at work. The only thing that remained uniform was the smock.

She grinned quickly, showing a row of teeth that he could tell had once been opalescent, but now appeared faded and slightly yellowed. "Told him you had a look as though you were 'bout to piss yourself frightened." The men standing around her cackled delightfully, their eyes narrowing on Enjolras. He pushed his glassed higher up his nose, trying to ignore the rotten smell of their breath and croaking laughter.

"You don't look old enough to be saying such things," Enjolras countered pitifully, trying to ignore her question.

"I am, so. I'm twenty-two."

He fought the destructive urge to scoff. If she wanted to be a liar, she could be a terrible one as long as she liked. Her age was of no importance to him; there was business that needed attending to, and he didn't have time to waste on picking fights with factory workers, especially girls. Instead, he took this opportunity to walk off with his head held high – no punches to be thrown, only graciousness as he allowed her to win this time.

And he would have gotten away from her, too – he would have forgotten about her and written the _grisette_ off as an ill-mannered mill rat, never to appear in his life or mind again – if she hadn't called back out to him.

"Ever been to a place like this before?" She started again. Her voice seemed strong for one so young and small as she, as well as coarse and accusing. "Ever seen people like us before in your life?"

_Yes,_ he fought the urge to say. _I used to know you better than you can imagine._ But the words did not come, so instead he turned around to face her once again, silent, waiting for her to go on.

Which she did. "Poor _Monsieur_ has never met girls that play with fire, huh? Well I know my way around well enough not to get burned." That was when her face changed a little; from playful to frustrated, to defensive, to spiteful. "I can take care of myself. I'm old enough to know what to do with myself, and what I will say and won't say. You don't know me, so don't pretend to! You lot are all the same – if you don't want to get your hands dirty, don't step outside Paris!" Her anger was palpable as she pressed both palms to his chest and shoved him backward.

"HEY!" the sound of an onlooking guard called out to the pair, narrowing in on the girl. He clutched a club in his hand. "Girl! Back to work – you know your place!" He quickly approached her and her eyes widened; in one swift motion, a gloved hand grabbed her arm and dragged her back to her post. She seemed to fight him for a moment, but then realized where she was and made the fight easier. He didn't have to swing.

From over the officer's shoulder and through the thick glass covering Enjolras' eyes, the girl's deep brown ones pierced him.

Something inside of Enjolras stirred.

"We will take care of her," the security officer told him upon his return, noting the girl returning to her work. "I apologize on behalf of the foreman; many of our workers come from the deepest pits of the gutter."

He nodded, muttering yet another half-hearted reply of some sort to the man. With one last look over his shoulder, the guard began to head back to his post. Enjolras watched him as he left, then let his eyes slip back over the girl whose name he had not caught.

Before the officer had stationed himself back in his place, the young journalist made his way back to the filthy mill worker with the dirty fingernails. Those dangerous eyes wouldn't turn up at him, and yet he could feel her sending daggers in his direction.

Enjolras was firm with her as he stepped forward. Perhaps if he told her... "_Mademoiselle_, you know not what you say."

"I thought the lady was quite clear," the tall man across from her said. "And if she wasn't clear enough, then let me make it easier: _Get. Out._" His words were nails: short and sharp and hammered in deliberately.

A moment of silence hung between them before a defeated sigh passed through him. Enjolras obliged, finally, against the sinking feeling of unpreparedness of too-few interviews_._ However, he also knew when to act appropriately; he had a head on his shoulders, and he also knew a thing or two about respect. It was time to bow out.

Enjolras' ride back to his flat was passed in silence. He opened the front door at the peak of noon and was greeted by a faithful mew. The gray cat nuzzled against his leg, weaving around his ankles as he slipped his shoes off, then bent down to pet it.

_Thunk._

The sound startled both Enjolras and the cat, which jumped and ran from the room immediately. Out of his pocket had fallen the tape recorder he had used for his interviews, the recording button still pressed. He had forgotten to turn it off.

Picking it up, he made his way to the couch and plopped down on it, staring at the device intriguingly. He clicked the button once again, stopping the reeling tapes from winding aimlessly, then began the process of rewinding. Tiny blips of sound zipped through the tape as it sped backward, through the loudness of the factory until finally there was quiet.

He pressed play.

"_It is just work," _came the voice of Reynaud. _"It helps pay the bills, so I'm thankful."_ Enjolras smiled, remembering the kind but nervous man whom he had interviewed earlier that morning.

As soon as his words came to an end, the tape was full of loud jumble. The girl's voice, which had sounded just above the machinery at the steel mill, was nonexistent in the tape. His stomach sank, knowing the audio quality was to blame.

A few minutes later, there were angry shouts. _Her voice._ Enjolras sat on the couch, stoic even in his own home. He closed his eyes, leaned his head back, and pressed stop.

_Enough_.


	3. Chapter 3 - Her Way Around

**CHAPTER THREE | HER WAY AROUND**

Éponine was not afraid of the nighttime.

The stars were out, which had to be a sign that something good would happen, and as she stared up at them, she took a sip of the brandy held in her lap. In her other hand, an expensive cigarette was lit and wafted smoke into the fabric of her clothes.

Her legs were crossed, out in front of her with all their longevity. Both ankles felt the chill of the snow on the ground, and her open palm started to burn it was so cold.

That was the funny thing Éponine had learned about things: if you can allow yourself to experience something wholly, it can, in fact, become something entirely different – or perhaps you just didn't notice it all so much. Like with the snow, or even more, with her poorness. Shirts with holes, smelly hair, and dirty fingernails all made her feel like garbage, and yet, it was because of all of those things that she could see the beauty of herself.

Not that she was in any way externally beautiful – in her own eyes, anyway. But the rough exterior made it easier to get through to her insides.

"I can be funny," Éponine said to no one, taking another sip and another puff. "I can make 'em laugh when I want to, if they don't have their heads shoved up their asses too far!" And then she began to giggle, making her own self laugh when no one else was around to do so. "And I can also make _Monsieur_ Marius laugh."

Then she thought his face, bringing it forward in her hazing mind. His bright eyes, the warm smile, the feel of his hands when he held hers – in a friendly gesture, of course – and the way he could make things seem not so lonely.

Marius Pontmercy was a pretty thing.

She stopped talking. Her mind was getting foggier by the minute, but her grip on the bottle never diminished. The girl with a face that was too thin and devastatingly small wrists fell onto her back. Her matted hair, which had not been washed in a week, was covered immediately in snow. It was a peaceful thing, she thought, that snow which was white and pure and good also fell in her yard. No one was special because it happened to everyone, so people took it for granted. Éponine still loved the snow; there was a certain peacefulness to it that was inexplicable.

After a few minutes of lying there, she sat back up before standing and walking toward the back door. On her way back in, she glanced through the gate in the alleyway to see a man staring back at her. She would have jumped, too, if she hadn't been expecting it just a little.

"Evening, sir," she said politely as she started for the house. In her stomach was a strange guilt.

"Hello, dearie," the man replied in a mangled tone. He had white hair which had been dirty so long it formed unintentional dreadlocks. "Spare a franc for a starving man? Please, I just need to buy some food for dinner."

But she could see it in his skin, in his eyes, in the way he stood – he was _aching_ for her money in a way that even a starving man could not. It was a dirty wanting, which could only mean that his intentions were for drugs of some sort. Perhaps an acid, or a pill, or a poison. It didn't matter much what it was for, money was money.

"Don't got any for you," she replied sadly, sliding open the door and quickly entering before she heard any protests. Money didn't grow on trees, and even if it did, there were enough mouths to feed in her family that there still would be no room to share.

Her back thudded against the door, and when she saw in through the dimly-lit room, she noticed her father's friends hanging about at the dinner table (which was usually covered in layers of dust and unpaid bills because they never used it). They were sitting around, playing cards as the cigarettes in their hands cast a mean fog in the air. Éponine felt the smoke in her eyes, and she had to squint to see clearly.

"There's the old girl," the robust voice of Claquesous came. "'Ey, 'Ponine, grab me another beer?"

She rolled her eyes. "Grab it yourself. Lord knows you need all the exercise your fat ass can get."

The other men laughed, cheering to it as they swigged down sips of Budweiser. Éponine really didn't think much of these men, as they were all of the same rotten sort as her father, but because she didn't have to deal with their drunken stupidity and wandering eyes on a daily basis, she tried not to hate them completely – as much as she wanted to, at times.

Only one of them gave her that strange feeling in the pit of her stomach, the one with the dark brown hair and the squinted eyes that always followed her around, the one with the good looks and the terrible act.

Éponine got up and left the room, and Montparnasse was quick to follow. No one noticed.

She went to her room, listening for the sound of the footsteps that often came; she was silent as he entered and placed his hand on her arm, grabbing it roughly. Murmuring, he spoke in barely distinguishable words against her ear, something about her skin. His breath was hot and smelled like alcohol. So did she.

Unmoving, Éponine followed his motions like a little doll. In her mind, she was still the child who played dress-up, Daddy's little girl, with the frilly frocks and pretty hats. However, there was a darkness to her now that no one knew, the dark she kept a secret inside the walls of her mind.

_Dark eyes, rough hands,_ Éponine thought slowly, sorrowfully. _This isn't Monsieur Marius._

"Okay," she said abruptly, his hands still all over her but nothing more. His lips were against her neck and she could feel the grime of his touch beginning to cover her. "That's enough."

He continued kissing for a moment, but eventually they began to slow and he removed himself from her skin. "You can be such a tease," he laughed, his finger slipping down underneath the collar of her shirt.

Éponine shrugged him away, standing from the bed and pulling at the bottom of her shirt. "I said no more... Another day." The door closed quietly as she headed out, leaving him to the darkness of her bedroom.

Montparnasse sat still on her bed, which was worn deeply with holes throughout its quilted cover. His eyes fell to the floor, staring at his shoes, completely alone once again. She always left him wanting more.

Éponine didn't bother telling anyone where she was going. Her mother and father were nowhere to be found, and the men playing cards at the table likely didn't care where she was headed. Carefully, she pulled her coat on and slipped out the front door this time, not bothering to look back at the dilapidated apartment building.

The streets were bustling at night, just as they always were – particularly tonight, as it was the Friday just before Christmas Eve and most people were out running errands, buying gifts, enjoying the nightlife of the French city. There were mostly tourists as she made her way toward the center of Clamart. It wasn't the same as Paris, which she was positive was a crowded mess on this wintry evening, but it was near it and that was good enough for most people.

Again, Éponine noted the looks and demeaning "P.U."s of those around her; they flapped their hands under their noses, circulating the air as she walked by. _They probably wouldn't smell too good either, if they lived like I did, _she thought defensively. But everyone was rich – at least, richer than she was – and they didn't understand what it was like to have to wonder if you would make enough to last the week.

She continued weaving her way through the crowd, serpentining through people who didn't walk fast enough, until she found herself on the outskirts of Clamart, nearest Vanves. The crowd seemed to grow even bigger as she found herself in the district of corporations and fashion and newness. Éponine knew to stay in the shadows as often as possible to avoid conflict as well as the slew of judgements just waiting to be passed by those in this expensive city.

It didn't take long for her to find the building. Briefly, she wondered to herself what she was doing in a place like this so late at night; it was nearing eleven o'clock and she needed to be to work in the morning at six. Still, that deep longing holding onto her stomach seemed to squeeze tighter as she neared her destination, dragging her faster and faster until she finally let go of caring and broke out into a sprint.

Vanves City Apartments loomed overhead, and she had to be buzzed in by a long row of numbers along the front of the place. _Please don't be busy,_ she thought desperately, although why she was so desperate, she wasn't sure. Beneath the tattered coat, she shivered, and it was not due to the cold.

After a moment of silence spent waiting agonizingly outside, she heard the familiar click emit from the small speaker at the bottom and then the even more recognizable sound of his voice.

"Hello?"

"_Bonsoir,_ _Monsieur,_" Éponine grinned. "Care to let me in?"

She could almost feel the smile in his voice. "I don't know, _Mademoiselle. _It's quite late, it might be wise to head home instead."

"If you don't let me in, I'm never talking to you again," she laughed. Then came the loud buzzing of the door being unlocked, and with a quick spin on her heel she entered the fancy hall of the apartment building.

There was a large crystal chandelier that hung in the entryway and the room was all aglow in a cascade of bright hues. Éponine's face turned upward, admiring its beauty briefly, then straightened to the staircase. With legs that felt weak from a day's worth of standing, walking, and lifting, she made her way up the five flights and waited at the top a moment, her narrow chest heaving slightly. It wouldn't be wise to allow Marius see her in such a state.

When she finally got her breathing under control, she pressed her shoulders back, her chest out, and her chin up. Her knuckles rapped three times on the door, and after a moment's wait, the sound of the lock being pulled sounded.

Marius stood before her, a kind smile on his face, one hand on the door frame with the other at his side, content and warm and comfortable. If she didn't know better, Éponine might have thought him expecting her.

"Éponine," he grinned sarcastically, stepping out of her way. "How nice of you to stop by."

Marius was the only boy like him in the world – of this, Éponine was absolutely positive. He was gentle and sweet and very nice to look at. But what made him so different was how he did not judge her for what she looked like, and instead treated her just as he would with anyone else.

The place was warm. "Nice fire you have going, _Monsieur,_" she said, raising her eyebrows before smiling a little. "Trying to keep yourself warm with your _wood_, rather than a lover, it would seem."

He laughed loudly at her perversion. "There you go, always teasing." Suddenly, he turned very serious. "I'm glad you stopped by."

Marius may have over-thought her blush had the place not been so warm, and had the outdoors not been so cold. Éponine moved across the room, drawn toward the sleek, ebony piano that sat in the corner of the apartment; it was always closed because Marius couldn't play, and as far as she knew, he didn't know anyone who did. Still, it was certainly nice to look at, and sometimes she needed a tool of distraction from the boy who made her cheeks flush.

"Play me a song," Marius instructed, heading to the kitchen to grab two beers. "Or, try to."

"Chopsticks is all I know," she said, a bit embarrassed. She flipped up the black cover that hid the bone white keys and let her fingers rest upon them. Picking random notes, she trickled up and down the keyboard playfully and with an innocent curiosity. "Maybe you should think about getting lessons, or something," she thought aloud, "so this beauty doesn't go to waste."

"It isn't wasted," he said, walking back in through the room, handing an opened bottle to Éponine who stopped playing to grab it from him. Her elbow pressed down on a few keys as she leaned into the piano, sipping the beer with a certain backward tilt of her head. A pounding sound of mid-notes thudded through the surrounding air. "As long as someone is around to enjoy it."

She stood from the bench, flipping the lid back down over the keys, and crossed the room until she reached the two double doors that led to the outside terrace. "Join me for a cigarette?"

Marius grabbed his expensive box of cigarettes and tucked them in his pocket, following her out the doors with the beer still in his hand. "Good god, 'Ponine," he shuddered, plucking a cigarette from his pocket to hand to her. "I don't believe you walked all this way in this cold."

Éponine shrugged, taking the cigarette between her lips before having Marius light it for her. On her breath was the familiar taste of nicotine often given to her by her _bourgeois_ friend.

A breeze blew between them, drifting a few flecks of snow with it. Marius looked up to find it just beginning to snow; with a sigh, he leaned against the terrace balcony and let the flakes hit him.

"Want to know something?" he said suddenly, to which Éponine nodded. "I hate my job."

She almost laughed. _Wonder what you'd think of mine._ "Why's that, _Monsieur_? Thought you were turning into a great lawyer of some kind in the big city."

"I've been a secretary for them for months. Do you know how emasculating that is? Girls are secretaries – I want to be doing something out there. Working with the people instead of just in the back room."

Her mind flashed to the homeless man begging for money in the alleyway near her house and she sighed, meeting his eyes tiredly. "Think of it this way: at least you _have_ a job."

Marius laughed. "I'll drink to that."

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Their night passed quickly, as it often does when in the company of friends. Marius played loud rock 'n' roll on the record player, air guitar included, and Éponine drank him out of house and home. There had to be twenty beers on the countertop by the time they finally retired, with over half of them belonging to the misfit girl. Marius had always been a sloppy drunk. Éponine, on the other hand, could better hold her liquor.

There was an unspoken agreement that whenever she came around to visit, she was made a bed for on the couch because he couldn't get her to take his. When it was so late at night, and when they were both so drunk, it was easy for her to fall asleep in the warm comforts of his apartment.

Éponine tried not to think of working the next day. She tried to hold on to every shred of happiness and joy in these fleeting moments with Marius before drifting off to sleep, into a day of hating and pain. But here, in the comfort of Marius' home, she was safe for the night.

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Enjolras was restless. For hours, he tossed and turned in the Queen-size bed, thinking of tomorrow and the day after that and the week, month, year after that. A certain feeling of futurism seemed to overcome him in the moments between awake and asleep.

Eventually, at around 2 am, he rolled out of bed and tugged on the slippers sitting on the floor. His eyelids were halfway open, and upon leaving his bedroom, he realized just how tired he really was. This didn't seem to deter him from staying awake. Instead, it seemed to propel him through the house, willing him to unshackle his mind from the chains of sleep.

The small gray cat was asleep in the corner, and it did not stir as he walked up beside it to look out the window. His own balcony was covered in the snow that still fell from the sky, drifting down upon Paris like a cloud.

Something weighed heavy in his chest as he put his coat on, opened up the double doors to the balcony, and leaned over it to look upon the city below. He was on the sixth floor which felt like a long ways up from the top, but tonight made him feel even more insignificant from such a great height.

Besides the cold, Enjolras was content. He was perfectly comfortable with his life, right in that moment. And all he could think of, was if there was someone else in Paris that felt like he did, maybe someone else that was sitting on their balcony on a sixth floor, wondering about the future and trying not to think about the past. Maybe they sometimes had strange anxiety, or breakdowns when they thought about all the terrible things they'd done, and maybe they liked the way the snow felt when it landed on their cheeks.

Somehow, the thought made him feel less alone.


	4. Chapter 4 - Penance

A/N: Thank you so much to everyone who reads, favorited, or followed! But I especially appreciate the comments, they have all been so kind! I really love writing this story, so my frequency in posting is completely authentic. Anyway, in regards to the chapter, a little more interaction with Enjolras and Éponine! :-)

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**CHAPTER FOUR | PENANCE**

In a curious circumstance of unexpected luck, Enjolras had been given an additional day to return to Clamart. The head of _Le Figaro,_ Henri Dupont, had found himself in a pickle because of how many stories he had assigned, all of which were worthy of printing except for one – Enjolras'. It was for this reason that he was given extra time to complete it, to retrieve another interview, and to fix what had occurred at the factory the day before.

Not that he had any real desire to go back.

It all felt very familiar to him, though; parking his car, showing his pass to the security guard outside the mill, entering the premises, and making his way up to the office of Louis Aimè. He was yet again granted permission to use the mill as he liked, but was jokingly warned to not go making habits of snooping. At least, he thought it was a joke.

Enjolras arrived at the bottom floor once again, the metallic smell hanging in the air so thick he could taste it. He tipped his head to the guards, who smiled at him and nodded, remembering. Beliveau did not accompany him this trip, as he had partially assumed would be the case due to his his previously showcased chauffeuring skills.

_Just get an interview and be done with it,_ he thought rationally. _You can be out of here in a half an hour if you can get some decent material._

The floor of the mill seemed dirtier today, which was littered with scraps of metal, grime, and spilled liquid (he assumed this to be chemicals, and so avoided stepping in with utmost concern). People still met his gaze as he passed, but they didn't seem as aggressive today. Perhaps this was because they had seen him before and knew that he was not a threat – at least, that's what he _hoped_ they thought of him.

"Make way!" someone called loudly, to which Enjolras spun around instinctively on his heel to see what all the commotion was. A large man carrying an equally large, steaming, metal bin came barreling down the aisle as though he were headed straight at Enjolras.

Immediately, he leapt out of the way, knocking into someone in the process while narrowly avoiding being hit with whatever hot matter was being held in the basin. He sighed gratefully, regained his composure, straightened his crimson tweed jacket, and turned back around to apologize to whomever he had knocked into.

But as soon as his eyes caught hers, his stomach began turning to knots.

"_You_ again," she said, narrowing her eyes.

He swallowed hard, thinking exasperatedly, _Why am I so intimidated by this girl?_ "Sorry for bumping into you," he sputtered, then inwardly kicked himself for acting like a scared little schoolboy in front of her.

"No need to apologize," she spat. "We wouldn't want to dirty poor _Monsieur's_ lovely jacket, would we?"

Enjolras pressed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, a habit of his that he had picked up years ago. He coughed into his hand, feeling suddenly embarrassed to wear anything remotely nice in front of the girl who still wore the same dirty old shirt underneath her smock.

When he said nothing in return, she shook her head in annoyance and turned back around to begin her work again.

Suddenly, the words came, and as though compelled by their immediacy, he reached out for her upper arm and grabbed it. The girl, who had clearly not been expecting it, yanked away from him and looked up with hostility ablaze in her eyes. But there was something else there, too – fear?

The men standing around her at the station looked up at him, that same anger in their own eyes.

He raised his hands up to his chest in acquiescence. "I don't mean any harm," he started again. "I wanted to apologize for the other day. If I made you feel-"

"You didn't make me feel anything," she said. "Don't flatter yourself."

"I just _meant,_" he pressed on, "that I know I don't know you. I don't know anything about you, and you certainly don't have to show me any sort of kindness. I don't need it, and I don't expect it." He looked to her, taking note of the way she stared off in the distance, the gears in her mind turning. The pause he took was long enough for her to snap out of it and meet his gaze once again. "Again, I apologize for any offense, _Mademoiselle._" He tipped his head to her and turned around, leaving on what he thought to be a good note.

This is the second time Enjolras thought to be free of this girl who he knew nothing of and did not much care for – but, yet again, she stopped him in his tracks.

"You apologize far too much," she called out simply.

He haulted, slowly turned around, and examined her carefully. Her dirty fingers were laced together at her chest and one foot was pointed at the floor. Something about her suddenly seemed different; her stance, her voice, the way she looked. Enjolras had to shake his head and remind himself that this girl was the same girl who had shoved him the day before, who had fought against the security guard, and who had spat angry words at him before coercing him to leave the mill.

There was something about her that intrigued him.

Before he could stop himself, Enjolras took a step back toward her and pulled the tape recorder out from his bag.

"Would you mind?" he asked.

A look appeared on her face similar to one he had seen before – the same expression that dashed across the face of Jérôme Reynaud, the worker he had previously interviewed in the stairwell. A familiar sinking feeling ached inside of him for no apparent reason, as if knowing by that one small flash of a look that she would not agree to an interview.

But, yet again, she surprised him.

With a tight smile, she took a step toward him. "Okay."

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They were alone in the stairwell. Enjolras was equipped with his tape recorder, which he had made sure was not left on through some accident or fluke of judgement. The girl, who seemed paler in the clear light of the stairwell, sat on the steps with her arms folded atop her knees, bunched up to her chest.

Enjolras was not sure whether to stand or sit down as well, so after a moment, he sat down. She didn't look at him strangely, so he assumed this was the right choice.

"Are you ready?" he asked lightly.

She nodded, still not looking at him. Enjolras decided that it was now or never, so he clicked the button indicating a small red circle and took a deep breath.

"Let's start with your name," he said objectively, extending the recording device toward her to get a better sound quality.

She cleared her throat, then leaned toward the recorder uncertainly; it was clear to Enjolras that she might have been a little nervous and even a bit confused. No one had ever asked her for an interview before – or anyone at all like her, as it were.

"Éponine," she said sharply. The word came out both familiar and foreign in her mouth, as though she had spoken it a thousand times but still didn't know if it belonged to her. "Éponine Thénardier."

"Alright, Éponine," he said slowly, as if she might be offended by him calling her by her first name. She didn't seem to appear any sort of way, so he continued. "How did you find yourself here?"

She straightened her shoulders, speaking with much more certainty this time. "I was referred to the job by a friend of the family. They clipped an advertisement out of the paper and told me I should inquire about it. We needed the money, so it only made sense." Pause. "Neither of my parents have proper jobs, so I wanted to start out right."

_What does she mean by 'proper'?_ he wanted to ask, but fought the urge.

Instead, he opted for a bit of small talk – even if it wasn't really his style. Maybe she liked small talk. "You pulled the ad from the paper? If it was in _Le Figaro, _I might have been the one to place it. I worked in advertising for a bit."

She shrugged. "Cool."

_Oh-kay. Guess small talk isn't really her style, either._

So he tried veering off onto a different approach, refocusing. "What do you do in the factory? What is your position, your job?"

"I work with the chemicals," she said. Her voice was a little shaky, and she kept looking back down at the recording device as though it were about to bite her. She went on to talk about the process of adding certain alloying elements to the compound so that it would strengthen the steel enough to be formed into sharp sheets. "It is one of the easier jobs at the mill, although it might not be..." she trailed off, her eyes suddenly very alert and wiry. She coughed and forgot to finish her sentence, looking anywhere but to him.

"'Might not be,' what?" Enjolras asked.

"It's nothing, _Monsieur,_" she replied. "Let's talk about something else."

He stopped, looking down at the recording device and then back up at her. "Is it this?" he asked quietly, holding it up just a little. "If I turn it off, would you be able to say it better?"

"You can't use it if it's not on the tape," she said, aggravated. "Keep recording."

He complied and did not flick it off. Éponine was still a bundle of nerves, which she tried very hard to mask but it was nearly impossible for her to keep a constant straight face. She kept fidgeting and looking at the small box with contempt.

"Could you tell me about your family?" he started again.

She snarled. "Why do you want to know about my family?"

"It is just for the paper, _Mademoiselle,_" he replied simply, but in the knotting sensation in his stomach, he could tell that he had lied; a part of him wanted to know, too, and not just the reporter version of himself that he tried to carry into the factory.

Sitting there beside her, he was simply a curious man – nothing more.

When she was silent, he sighed and turned off the tape. Almost instantly, she turned to him, angry and confused. "Turn it back on," she said. "Ask me something else."

"It won't help," he told her, not sure as to why he was being so openly honest about it with her. "It isn't your fault, but I can see that you are not well because of it."

She stood immediately at the finality of his words. "You are unfair," she shouted, but only because there were no security guards in the stairwell to hear her. "Talk of interviewing me, apologizing even – and why did I listen? Why did I agree?"

Enjolras had not realized how much this interview was affecting her; she was furious – not at him, but at herself – because she could not control herself long enough to talk rationally. At this thought, he too stood, facing her at above her eye level.

He nearly reached out to her again, but thought better of it when remembering how last time went. "You are not at fault here – perhaps another day-"

"There won't _be_ another day," she hissed. "We both know that."

"There could be," he said. "It may not get published, but there will always be another day."

Her voice rose, throwing her hands up in the air. "Well, then what's the point? And, even if I told you, you'd probably just change what I say in the paper. Even if I told you what was happening, you'd just ignore it and write about how grand this place is for opening its doors to the rats of France like it's some sort of charity! This is not a goddamn charity, okay?"

How easy Éponine could snap, growling and lashing out and trying to scare him. Like some sort of wolf, she protected herself and those she knew, and because he was an intruder, he could not be trusted.

But he had seen that fear inside of her before, so he knew it was there. This made him ready for it.

"You don't need to be afraid," he said quietly.

She was quiet, too, folding her arms across her chest defensively. "How do you know? How could you know if I should be afraid?"

It suddenly dawned on him that this girl was beginning to crack. He had seen all sides of her – from the day before, in her jokes and anger and frustration, and then today in the way she showed her fear.

Enjolras was impartial. He was stoic, he was objective, and he was marble; there wasn't a part of him that felt cracked, blemished, or attached to anything besides his work. Still, there _was_ something about this girl – not in the feeling of butterflies or hopeful, budding romances, as he simply did not have time for women and, besides, he would make a terrible swain.

But there was certainly something there when it came to this girl, who was equal parts confusing and infuriating.

"Éponine," he said, tasting her name on his tongue as he said it, for the first time really hearing it. It tasted sweet and bitter, all at once. And, as he said her name, she looked up to him with wide brown eyes shaped like two little almonds. They were glassy, and a thought crossed his mind that she might start to cry. "Listen, if there is something going on here that needs to be accounted for, I want you to not hesitate in contacting me."

_So this is it,_ he thought, stopping to think after already having spoken.

Éponine didn't say a word. Her face was rigid, but it was so rigid that Enjolras felt it forced.

He stuck a hand into his bag and pulled out a small white card with tiny black font on it. On it was a name and number – his – and it was as straightforward as business cards came.

"Take this," he said, holding it out to her. "I am still interested in an interview, but perhaps at a time when you are well."

"I am well _now_," she said. Her voice shook again. Looking straight at him, she took the card in both hands and ripped it straight down the middle, then flung both halves onto the floor. "You're a terrible reporter." The words stung with conviction, and with one final look, she left the stairwell.

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Enjolras obtained two more interviews before returning to _Le Figaro_ to finish his story. It was everything he thought it would be – a story of redemption, a town with gutters full of poor and broken people that had a place to go for work – and was praised by Dupont for his hard work and extra trouble he took to make the piece what it was.

But even though he should have been happy, over-the-moon, or even joyful, he wasn't completely. It was then he realized that there is more than being either happy or sad, because he certainly wasn't sad, but he wasn't happy, either. He felt halfway there, in between joy and darkness.

He couldn't shake those glassy eyes from his mind.

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Éponine worked the rest of the day, fury on her face for the first few hours before easing into a strange emptiness. The bell sounded that it was the end of the day and the hoards of people flinging off smocks and rushing to the exists began once again.

But this time, she was not as eager to leave. Instead, she stalled at her post, taking her apron off slowly, thinking hard as she did so. She looked across the crowd of people, then looked back to the door at the base of the stairwell where that boy – whose name she still did not know – had taken her earlier in a failed attempt at an interview.

She balled up her fists, that lingering fury taking over her for an instant. But after a minute had passed, she released her hands and let them fall to her sides in defeat.

Before anyone could stop her, she was heading toward the stairwell. She looked around before opening the door and closing it tightly behind her.

The card was still there, in two pieces on the floor with bent edges.

Sighing, Éponine bent down and picked it up, holding both halves with sad and careful hands. She evened them out so that they appeared whole again.

"Enjolras," she murmured aloud.


	5. Chapter 5 - Zippered Shut

A/N: Thank you everyone so much for your support on this story! The way I have it planned, it will be very long. Trust me, the exposition will eventually reveal itself! There's just some build-up to it before you find out exactly what happened to Enjolras and what is currently happening to Eponine. Also, my apologies for the late update, life has been hectic lately.

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**CHAPER FIVE | ZIPPERED SHUT**

Enjolras was up early the next morning, a pot of coffee brewed and steaming the thick, black scent through the warm apartment air. He didn't much care for creamer; if it was strongest without any additives, that was his method of choice.

His desk in the corner of his bedroom faced a single window which let in copious amounts of light. He had his glasses on, but in the haze of morning drowsiness, they had fallen down the bridge of his nose.

Both hands were on the keys – typewriter keys – and they played a melody. _Click, clack, click-click-click ding!_ And then came the sound of the platen's round scroll being zipped back to place with a flick of Enjolras' nimble fingers. Tiny black words changed to long lines, filling the muted, white page. These lines transformed to paragraphs, to rows upon rows of lines that all looked similar altogether but different on their own.

He had been up since four o'clock with that strange longing feeling – but for what he wasn't sure – and a terrible case of anxiety about the predominate, looming future. So he did the only thing he knew he could do at a time like that: made some coffee, watched as snow drifted down upon the city from his second-floor balcony, and wrote.

This writing wasn't for the paper, although he had been assigned a new assignment about petty celebrity gossip. Maybe it was because of the content of his new story that he felt the need to escape its horridness for something of more weight. This new story he wrote was the same as his paper for the paper, but it was full of more truth; the veiled threat of guards armed with clubs standing watch over those in the factory, the scar on the hand of Jérôme Reynaud, and Éponine Thénardier's curious way of dodging his questions. Their secrecy when commenting on how the steel mill was run both perplexed him and shocked him. Could something actually be going on there that no one knew about? And, if there was, no one would know unless you forced it out of someone.

He sighed, his furiously fast fingers finally pausing on the keys. There was no use. _What is the good in an essay about nothing more than a theory? A hunch? _Enjolras thought.

After a few minutes of staring off into the distance, sleep calling out for him once again, he stood from his chair before taking a long swig of the dark, caffeinated drink.

_Wake up,_ he thought to his physical self. _Open your eyes._

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Everything felt heavy – the air, his footsteps, and the paper in his hand. The name of the paper was printed on the front in large scrawling font, familiar to all those who inhabited Paris. But it felt strangely unfamiliar to _him_ today, because although his own words graced the pages, a gut instinct told him those words were false.

The guard at the front gate didn't ask him for his pass this time. It was almost like they had become friends; the man lifted his chin to Enjolras, to which Enjolras tilted his in return. A sign of acceptance among men.

His feet hurdled up the steps, already anxious to get out of there. It was past seven o'clock, and he wasn't even sure Dupont would be there or not. All Enjolras knew was that he needed to drop of the paper, fulfill the man of his word, and get out; his chest felt as though it were dragging across the floor, weighty and full of something... A strange guilt.

"Bonsoir," a woman sitting at a desk near his office called to him. He stopped, looked at her, and waited to hear the words he could already see forming in her eyes. "_Monsieur_ Dupont has just left for the evening. Did you have something for him?"

She already knew what he would say, too. Her eyes were fixed on the newspaper in his hand, knowing.

"Just this," Enjolras said shortly. "My story, about _Les Aciers de l'Aim__è._ It was printed in _Le Figaro,_ I just came to drop it off."

Holding her hand out, she made no move to get up from the desk. Enjolras decided then that he didn't much care for this secretary.

Grudgingly, he dropped the paper in her hand, bid a quick farewell, and started back down the stairs. Sunset had long-since past, and the darkness of evening reflected in the windows of the fluorescent-lit hall, almost like it wasn't nighttime yet, a simple illusion.

Leaving was easy. He hadn't had to meet with Dupont after all, even though he seemed pleasant enough a man before. It was just that Enjolras wasn't in the mood for talking to anyone. The day had dragged on for so long already, he was ready to retire to his home and finish the essay for the morning's paper. Interviewing celebrities was among his least favorite activities, something he prayed he would not have to do again for a very long time.

Into the freezing cold, the snowy winter air, the parking lot, the car door, to the keyhole – and the car was finally stared. A deep sigh overtook him, forcing his eyes shut and his neck back into the headrest.

He hadn't been there long before the rumble started. He nearly shot up, his eyes flashing open as they focused on the factory. A low shakiness emitted from it, though it only lasted a moment or two before the silence returned. Transfixed, Enjolras couldn't look away. _What was that?_

That's when he saw the first few people begin to trickle from the double doors beneath a sharp _sortie_ sign, glaring green against the gray of the building. He watched, one by one, as filthy men and women left the mill (although it was mostly men, which he could now be sure of).

For some unspoken reason, his eyes scanned the crowd fervently, as though he might miss something if he glanced away. Then, when he saw it, he knew what it was he was looking for.

A pair of glassy eyes shimmered a bright white against the blue night. He couldn't be certain if it was her or not since he was a parking lot away from the horde, but as she came further into focus and the crowd began to disperse, her tattered, striped shirt made it obvious.

_Éponine._

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Éponine didn't see him until the car was already pulling out of the parking lot. She stood there in that same old outfit she had worn every time she saw him, which a small part of her felt a little embarrassed by. The other part of her, the overwhelmingly obscene part, didn't give a damn because that was just how she was. With every flaw running through her veins, Éponine was unapologetic.

She was also exhausted, so she sure wasn't going to let him drive off without catching a ride.

"Hey!" she shouted, knowing that there was no possible way for him to hear her over the crowd of people and the engine in his car. She broke out into a sprint, which may have been quicker had she not been on her feet all day long. "Wait – stop!"

It was just her luck that his eyes flashed to the rearview mirror, meeting hers for a moment as she bolted down the sidewalk toward him.

Leaning over his seat, she saw him lean over to roll down his window. His shoulders were broad, so much so that the tweed jacket he always wore pulled tightly beneath his neck. Éponine pulled at the bottom of her shirt out of habit before bending over to his eye level.

"Enjolras," she said, her teeth digesting it in all its smooth consonants. "What are you doing here?"

"Finishing up some work," he said. "I was just here to drop off the finished paper."

_The one with the false-truths,_ Éponine thought. She was still angry about it, but clenched her jaw shut to stop from saying anything that would interfere with his decision of whether or not to drive her home. The snow was beginning to sting her cheeks.

She shrugged, leaning against the open window with folded arms. _Time to cut to the chase._

"Are you in any rush to get home? I could use a ride – it's freezing."

He was quiet a moment. "You really want a ride from me?"

"Is there a problem?"

In his ears, her voice sounded low, dual-toned, like a gravelly, parched throat.

Enjolras shook his head, leaning back away from her and repositioning himself in the driver's seat. "Just didn't think you'd be up for chatting." Pause. "Or a ride."

Éponine didn't much feel like talking, as her eyes felt like they were on their way to closing. She slid into the passenger's side and shut the door tightly behind her. She sighed, exhausted, and fell down deeper into the cloth seat. In hindsight, it was probably not the most comfortable place to sit, but at that moment, she knew that sleep was on the horizon.

"It's just cold," she said, eyelashes weaving shut like the teeth on a zipper. "It isn't far, I promise."

Enjolras was quiet beside her, his fingers taking hold of the wheel once more before putting the car into drive and pulling back off onto the street. He didn't quite know where she lived, but he could guess.

Her breathing was delicate, something that surprised him. She was all jagged edges and violent, cutting words until she grew tired. She wasn't angry here, softly drifting into a hazy comfort with one hand propping her head up from the car door. Every now and then she would open her eyes to make sure he was still heading the right way, and then indicate which street to turn down.

In these moments, she was very quiet.

"Up here," she said finally, pointing to the bedraggled apartment building with a dirty finger. Enjolras parked in front, looking around nervously as he did so. This was not the nice part of town. No, this was about as far from his own apartment building as it got.

His hands fell from the wheel and landed in his lap, and it took him a moment to look over at the girl as she went to open the door.

He took a deep breath. "Wait," he said, just as her fingers touched the door handle. She looked back at him, their eyes meeting, curiosity halfway filling her eyes. He noticed how dark the circles were underneath them, like she hadn't gotten a good night's sleep in a long, long time.

Those deep purple circles were too familiar.

"Éponine," he started, knowing what he wanted to say but feeling the words catch in his throat. "I don't know you well enough to worry about you."

"You really don't."

He grew quiet. The things he might have said were cut short, and instead he turned back the other way and finished what he had to say quickly. "Goodnight, _Mademoiselle._"

Maybe she was expecting something more too, but she promptly reminded herself that she was in no place to expect anything of anyone. That was that. With a final huff, she left the car and stalked off to her home. She jiggled the door open and slammed it shut without so much as a glance back in his direction.

_Not so much as a thank you. Not a smile, not a word, not anything._ Enjolras found it easy to become angry with this girl – or, if not anger, at least vexation. She was annoying, infuriating, frustrating, and arrogant; so many things for a girl like her to be, a girl who lived in the slums of Clamart and wore the same moth-eaten t-shirt every day. She was all frayed edges with no clean lines. Not swift, not straight, not sure.

Éponine was nebulous.

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The house was full of voices; hoarse ones and hearty ones, voices that couldn't help but compete with one another to be the loudest. There would be no avoiding them tonight.

In her pocket, she had the few francs she had earned for her work that day. As she entered the kitchen and caught sight of her father, and then the familiar sight of the bottle in his hand, she pulled the money from her pocket and placed it on the table. He didn't have to tell her – she knew the routine by now.

"That's a good girl," he grinned madly, "that's my Éponine."

Her chest fell. He wasn't saying this to her, he was saying it to her money. He said this to how much she was worth to him.

In the kitchen, standing around with her father, was his band of dissolutes: the _Patron-Minette_. Claquesous stood, ultimately robust against the refrigerator. He had a fifth of vodka clenched in his fist, halfway empty without a chaser in sight. Beside him was Babet, the tall thin dentist still wearing his white uniform he had left work in. He had a strange grin on his face, one that looked out of place beneath his sunken eyes and fair hair. Finally, across from him was the gigantic Gueulemer, all muscles and rigid bone structure and blankness in his expression.

Her mother was there, too. M. Thénardier was seated on a ragged old barstool, her hair a mess, unnecessary sunglasses covering her eyes, and a yellowed smile glaring back at the lot.

"Éponine," a familiar voice came. She shot a look over her shoulder only to find Montparnasse, crossing the threshold to where the others stood. He shot a sideways smile at her, his hand reaching out to grab her upper arm. His fingers curled around her tightly.

"_Bonsoir_," Éponine nodded, trying not to think about him too long. He stood so close, even with her family around – not that she figured they would care, it just felt strange. When he was there, she felt a little dirtier.

He leaned a little closer to her ear and whispered, "I was watching you, you know." His eyes flashed to the door. "From the other side of the window."

"Waiting up for me, were you?"

Montparnasse laughed. "You could say that." He stopped for a moment, taking a few steps back as if to lead her into the next room. Éponine followed, trying not to let on how tired she was; she was not in the mood for anything he was going to want to do, but she would try to oblige if she knew someone had been waiting for her.

Maybe it was because no one ever waited for her.

Into her bedroom, his hands went to her hair and his lips went for her neck. _Hickey. Hickey._ More kissing, more touching. He brushed up against her once and she felt him, which made her very nervous. Not that he could tell; Montparnasse was a man on a mission, nipping and kissing roughly, stopping only to slip off his shirt.

In the low light of Éponine's bedroom, she could see him better than she ever could in the light. He was of average build, but perhaps looked more boyish than manly. His eyes were dull, although she could tell they may have once been full of life. Soft hands from his inability to keep a steady job; a bullet hole scar on his shoulder; hunger on his hot breath.

"Wait," Éponine said quietly. He didn't hear her at first, so she cleared her throat and pulled away. "Wait."

He sighed. "Not again..."

"No, I mean..." she started, but she didn't know where to go with it; she was caught halfway between a thought. "I just wanted to wait." She nearly cringed at her own words, and at how childish they sounded. How immature. How foolish.

Montparnasse was silent. He pulled away, angrily throwing on his shirt and pants. "You can't keep _waiting_ forever, you know."

"I know." She quickly wrapped a messy sheet around her bare shoulders and looked back up at him.

"So what is there to save it for?" He leaned in close to her face – too close. "Who are you saving it for?"

Éponine shook her head. Something about how close he was made her feel uneasy. After a moment of silence, he started back toward the door.

"One last thing," Montparnasse said, his voice grainy. "Who was that? The one who dropped you off. A man."

"Oh, him," Éponine shrugged effortlessly, "just some guy. I needed a ride home so I caught one with him." But as she spoke the words, she almost felt guilty. Like she was lying, not just to Montparnasse but to herself. She wasn't quite sure why that was, because she didn't know him and had truly only used him as a way to get out of the freezing cold. Still, it felt wrong about condemning him as "just some guy."

_Something,_ she thought briefly. _He could be something._

Montparnasse nodded slowly, buying her lame write-off before ducking out of the room to return to the others.

Again, Éponine was left in the dark; this time, her shirt was on the floor along with both socks, and her pants were unbuttoned. The sound of everyone out in the kitchen was loud, and she could hear thick laughing and jeering of Montparnasse upon his return.

She didn't care what they thought of her – not of her mother or father, of their few friends that were all from the same side of the tracks, or even of Montparnasse.

She suddenly thought of Marius again, of how kind and gentle he always was to her. Her eyes stung. Maybe if it had been him instead, if he had been there instead of Montparnasse, they could have laughed it off when she told him to stop. He might have invited her out to see Paris at night, underneath all the snow and white Christmas lights.

Éponine thought that, in that moment, it might be nice to be with Marius.

She buried her face into her pillow and screamed.


	6. Chapter 6 - Struck to the Bone

Sorry it's been so long since my last update! I really appreciate the positive feedback I have received on this, you guys are the nicest group of people ever. :')

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**CHAPTER SIX | STRUCK TO THE BONE**

Éponine had dolled herself up to the best of her abilities that day. She snuck a shower as soon as she got home, making sure to keep it short to save money on their water bill. Even her clothes got a change; the striped, collared shirt was swapped for a burgundy turtleneck, while her pants got swapped for a brown pair of trousers (which were just a hair too long, but looked a thousand times better than her trusted-yet-tattered pair of bluejeans).

She left her day's wages on the counter near the refrigerator before heading out the door to meet Marius in Vanves. Of course, he had offered to pick her up, but she didn't want to cause Marius any distress at the sight of her living place. She would never invite the unwarranted pity into her life by him, as it would make her feel even worse about the state of their apartment.

It took her a while of walking, but she knew the streets well. When she finally showed up at that familiar door to Marius' residence, she caught her breath – just as she always did – then went to knock.

The door burst open as soon as her knuckles hit the door. There stood Marius, beaming, dressed handsomely with a nice suit coat and casual pants.

"You sure look nice, 'Ponine," he said, and added with an air of sarcasm, "What's the occasion?"

She scoffed. "_Monsieur_, you flatter yourself." Still, she was very aware of her appearance tonight, as if she finally had a reason to get all dressed up: Marius had asked her out on a date.

Not that he had called it a date, but she figured she could read between the lines well enough to know.

Marius grabbed his wallet off the table near the door, shoving it deep down into his pocket, then plucked his jacket off the coat rack. As the two took their leave, heading down the stairs side-by-side, he nudged with his elbow.

He didn't have to say anything; Éponine already knew. And she was beaming.

_Finally._

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"Finally," Enjolras muttered, handing over a few bills to the cashier as he took the large cup of coffee from her. She eyed him fiercely – perhaps because he had been so intimidatingly impatient with her, but also because it was hard for any woman to deny how handsome he was. Not that he was aware of this from behind his glasses, or his marble expression, or the turtlenecks and tweed jackets and façades.

He took a long sip before heading out into the chilly winter air. Christmas was so close he could almost taste it, although he didn't have much time to spend enjoying the holidays. He was constantly at work since being promoted, sometimes heading down to the office at all hours of the night just to finish up writing a column or placing advertisements (a tasking job that still seemed to fall on his shoulders despite his new, meaningful position).

Christmas carolers were trolling about the town, which he pushed past with an air of hostility. Some of them turned back to glance at him, the boy on a mission with a destination in clear sight – to only him. He crossed the streets with his head held high, the coffee clutched in his grip, and a heavy leather book bag slung over his shoulders.

It was nearly eight o'clock and _Pere Lachaise _closed its gates before long.

His strides were long and his movements well-planned, like he could see his path before walking it to avoid complications with strangers trying to walk.

Enjolras saw the entrance looming in the distance. As he neared it, the sign atop the cement pillars seemed to glare down at him, a feeling he hadn't felt in a long while.

A feeling he seemed to have been running from.

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For the first time around Marius, Éponine was quiet. She sat in silence, listening to whatever it was he was going off about. She wasn't much listening, but was instead sipping on her latte and watching the movement of his lips. Sometimes her eyes would flicker up to meet his, but then she would move back to his lips, then to his frazzled hair, the movement of his neck when he spoke, his poorly-tied necktie, the crinkles around his face when he smiled, and then his laughter. It was loud and rang through the café like a hollow bell.

"So, 'Ponine," Marius started again pointedly, refocusing her back to the conversation, "did you have anything planned after this?"

She laughed. "Thought we were just going through the motions of a typical Monday night, _Monsieur. _Beers at your place before making fools of ourselves on the balcony – the neighbors calling the cops – falling asleep on your couch?"

"Thought you'd say that." He grinned, standing up from the table before scooting his chair in. "I had something different in mind though."

Her eyebrows raised. "Oh? And what would that be, may I ask?" She stood and pushed her chair in, leaving the half-drunken latte on the table before taking Marius' arm and following him out of the shop.

"You'll like it," he said finally. "Been planning it a while, really."

She couldn't help it when her face flushed pink. Were they actually discussing what she _thought_ they were discussing? Her stomach was doing flips like she was some sort of little schoolgirl, and for a block or two, she forgot about everything else but being there with Marius, out at night with their faces all aglow from the Christmas lights twinkling around the city.

But it was when they crossed the _Rue Jean Bleuzen_, Éponine felt the air change. Perhaps it was that the wind was blocked by the tall, pointed steeples pinned all along the street, but something suddenly didn't feel right. She gripped Marius' arm a little tighter. He didn't notice.

"_Monsieur_ Marius," Éponine started, but stopped suddenly when she noticed the look on his face. His eyes had gone wide, shoulders stiff, utterly stricken – but by what, she couldn't tell.

_This is wrong,_ she thought to herself. _Something here is very wrong. _

"Do you see?" he asked in a hushed tone.

Pontmercy's feet were stuck, frozen in place like his knees had locked up. Without a word, Éponine slowly followed his gaze to whatever it was he had become transfixed on, somehow already knowing that she didn't _want_ to know.

But she looked anyway.

And her chest fell.

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_One. Two. Three. Four._

The headstones were lined up, all identical and gravelly and old. Most of them were, at least; the ones that weren't only popped up once every so often, because this part of the cemetery was mostly for those who lived during 18th and 19th centuries.

They had been old souls, though. Enjolras felt himself growing more and more saddened and guilty and insignificant with each step he took toward the stone he'd seen too many times in his dreams at night. _Five. Six. Seven. Eight._

Nine.

Enjolras stopped, his boots crunching in the hard, frozen snow that had not been touched since the snowfall. One deep breath.

"Edmont Grantaire," he whispered. Before he could help himself, he was kneeling. A sudden rush of emotions made its way through him and he felt his eyes stinging. He pinched them shut tightly – _not after all of these years, God, please, no more tears_ – and took a deep breath as he tilted his head upward. Eyes opened, and the pinhole night sky glowed back at him. It was very sad, but it was also very peaceful.

When he looked back at the tombstone, he remembered the time when its finality struck him. It was a few Christmastimes ago, but a few times after the riots. It was the in-between time that made him feel like he was never going to drown, trapped somewhere between sinking and floating, struggling without any air in his lungs in the deep, dark water.

He sat back and tucked one knee under his arm, while his other hand which still held the coffee cup rested on the ground beside him, propping him up.

"You know," Enjolras started, "if you'd have been here right now, you might've knocked this coffee right out of my hand... and told me that I needed something better to drink than this shitty joe from an equally shitty café." He took another sip, just to be sure it was as gritty as he remembered. It was. "Well, it's certainly no _Musain_."

Enjolras had been avoiding the cemetery a little more often than usual lately, mostly because it was just another part of himself that needed to be let go – but if no one else was remembering them, who was? Life had been looking up though, and sometimes, forgetting seemed to be easier than keeping them all alive inside his head.

He sighed. Sometimes it felt foolish talking to a slab of carved rock.

"You would've been 25 today," he said finally. And that was all – no more words, no more empty memories spoken alone...

Just a statement that hung in the air like a thick, poisoned cloud.

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Standing before Éponine was a girl. She had a beret, bright red lips that were visible even from where she and Marius stood a half a block away. The girl wore a brown wool coat with gold buttons with little camel boots on her small feet. There was something very sweet about her – perhaps it was the big, doe eyes with long eyelashes to match, or perhaps it was the way her mouth was parted, blowing warm breaths into the chilly nighttime air as she tried hopelessly to hail a cab.

Marius was frozen in place.

"Oh, I don't believe this," Éponine muttered to herself. "Come on Marius, let's go back home." She tried to take his arm again, to pull him in the opposite direction and avert this entire situation altogether.

But she should have known not to behave so foolishly.

"Stop, 'Ponine, wait," Marius said immediately, slipping his arm from hers and starting back in the opposite direction. She looked back at him with narrow eyes full of confusion disbelief.

"Do you know her?" he asked excitedly.

"Of course," Éponine threw back at him, "because I know every bourgeoise girl in France – _especially_ two-a-penny ones like that."

"She's..." Marius trailed off, glancing back over his shoulder. A stupid grin had planted itself unmovingly on his lips. Éponine could see the wheels in his mind turning already; something about him had changed so suddenly that she hardly had time to react. Just two blocks ago – two minutes ago – felt like a lifetime ago.

The girl calling the cab suddenly stopped, looking around all gooey-eyed and helpless. Then, as if by some trick of fate, she just so happened to look Marius' way.

And that was it – it was all over but the crying, which Éponine wasn't prepared for tonight. Not on this night, one that was supposed to be so fun and carefree and _finally_ a proper chance to prove to him that she could clean up and be flirty and pretty, too. But her chances were now out the window; in just one glance, she knew that things were altogether different and were never going to switch back. Like a lightbulb suddenly illuminating a dark room, Éponine now saw what was never there before – something he had never had before with her.

"She needs help calling a taxi," Marius said quickly, his smile big and bright and gleaming. "I'm going to go over and help, alright? Stay right here."

"Woof," she said simply, as does a faithful dog waiting for its master to return. With that, Marius was off in the direction of the girl in the black beret and red lips and little brown boots. She was too pretty, Éponine thought spitefully; it was unfair to try and compete with that kind of beauty.

_Life's not fair, 'Ponine,_ she thought, trying to somehow rationalize how painfully her chest ached. _You can't just expect boys like that to love you that way, and the sooner you realize it, the better._ For a second, she almost believed herself; she almost had herself convinced that she was being unreasonable here, that Marius was never hers to keep, and that it was unrealistic for her to think she might have had a chance with him.

But then she remembered how selfish she could be – and she became unabashedly tempestuous.

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Enjolras and Éponine each went back to their respectful homes that night, alone, both of them longing for something what was out of reach - close enough to taste, but too far away to find themselves happy.

They both got very drunk on their own, wandering the halls of their homes with emptiness antagonizing their swollen bellies while eating away at their cores. The liquor made them numb, at least for the night. When they awoke in the morning, things were worse than they had been the night before.

But they would endure.

They were good at that, at least.


	7. Chapter 7 - No Light

**CHAPTER SEVEN | NO LIGHT**

It was two days before Christmas and Éponine was, of course, at work. If one was looking for her for any reason at any given time, chances are they would find her at the mill, standing stiffly at her station with a mound of aluminum piled up at the center of the table. A few bottles of chemicals as well as a hot mixing pot were situated to her left and she had a tight-lipped frown on her face.

Pourlevaire L'Fault stood across from her, a man who was too tall and too broad-shouldered to be working in the minerals. Somehow, he'd gotten stuck alongside Éponine at one of the many stations situated around the core of the factory. The two worked together, sorting out chemicals and proper aluminum shards for the mixtures that would be melted down in the blast furnaces.

_It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it. _

Éponine told herself this periodically throughout the day – especially when the guards would start to become restless.

Through blurry eyes, she could see the snow falling outside, frosting the windows of the factory's third floor, which was visible from her place on the bottom level. Everything looked so big from the ground floor; the guards pacing near the top of the high-ceilinged work area, their clubs, and the glint of guns hiding just underneath their blue militant clothes all seemed bigger and more fierce.

"The vultures are circling today," Pourlevaire muttered across the table to her. She glanced up at him, then back at the guards who looked bored out of their minds. "Wonder who's going to slip up and give them something to do this time."

"Hope it's that asshole, Rupert in furnaces," Éponine slurred. "Remember last week when I went n' gave him the mixes, and he said something about a girl's place in a factory – well I nearly gave him something to be sorry about. Nearly wiped that damn smirk off his face."

A small smile crossed his stony face. "You should've. I'd have joined you, probably would have made for a more interesting day." He paused before adding, "Is something the matter?"

"Nothing," Éponine said simply, ignoring the murmur of pain still gripping at her chest and the splitting headache sending aching waves through her brain. "Why?"

"Haven't heard you singing at all today."

Éponine went silent, meeting Pourlevaire's eyes once before returning her focus back to work – or, trying to, at least. Sometimes Éponine could become so quiet and withdrawn that it was discouraging to try and make any sort of contact with her. The stone-faced man sighed, knowing there was no use talking to her anymore, and left her alone with her thoughts.

It was hard to concentrate on anything that day; she had rolled out of bed, still half-drunk, trying desperately to get control of herself and wake up enough to walk to work.

If Montparnasse had been over, maybe he would have offered her a ride, but her father and the _Patron-Minette_ were nowhere to be found. This was just another thing she didn't want to think about, but something that constantly occupied her thoughts. Was it another drug deal, or worse? She shook her head aimlessly to clear her thoughts – but it did no good.

Her mind went through the motions; flashing to Marius' kind face and touching upon a fond memory of them together at the Eiffel Tower, her heart leapt. They stood amongst tourists and even pretended to be tourists, themselves, asking people to take pictures of them in their best English accents. And then, suddenly, the memory was ripped from her, as though something dark had viciously gripped it and tore the thoughts from her. A fresh, foggy face took its place: the face of a girl with red lips and a snakelike grin, her black beret's point tipped up like a half-set of devil horns.

It didn't matter that, in all actuality, this girl was more innocent than a daisy. As far as Éponine was concerned, she was the impending root of all corruption.

Sharp pains dug at her temple. She should have known better than to drink an entire fifth to herself at one in the morning. Éponine felt woozy, and the more she thought about how unfit for work she was, the more sick to her stomach she felt. She needed to purge – soon.

"I think I'm gonna be sick," she said after a moment, her words hurried as she took a step back from her post. "Watch this for me, I'll be back..." and her words trailed off because she couldn't focus on anything but the immediacy of things. She didn't check to make sure Pourlevaire had heard her, and instead she spun on her heel and started toward the stairs at the far corner of the mill.

Her vision was getting blurrier as anxiety made her feel even worse. It was coming on too quickly, and she wasn't prepared for it.

"Hey!" someone shouted, but she didn't stop to see who. "Where do you think you're going!"

Without a moment's notice, she was grabbed harshly by her shoulder and spun around. Face-to-face with her was a guard, his club ready in one hand while the other hand dug into her clavicle, bruising the skin against the bone beneath.

Éponine tried to shrug him off, but it only made him clutch tighter. She let out a small cry.

"No one leaves their post 'til they're excused," the guard said. His eyes were sharp like daggers and they cut deep into hers with unwarranted fury. "Now, head back to work or you'll be sorry you didn't."

Stumbling backward, she turned back around and started back toward the table. Pourlevaire eyed her wearily before glaring daggers at the guard following intently behind her.

Éponine managed to keep the bile rising in her throat at bay as Pourlevaire lifted the steel basin and carried it toward the furnaces. She could feel the many eyes of surrounding workers boring into her. Her neck felt hot.

The guard who had reprimanded her watched over her shoulder soundlessly, his chin lifted high in self-importance. He still held the club. There was also something very sickening about this guard, who had dealt with Éponine multiple times before in the workplace. His breath smelt of stale brandy and too many cigarettes; he had yellow teeth and yellow eyes.

"You know the rules here," the guard hissed, his lips dangerously close to Éponine's ear. "You girls don't get any special privileges..." He trailed off slightly, spotting a small purple hickey at the nape of her neck – a gift from Montparnasse just a few days prior. The man smirked, pressing a hand to the small of her back, "Even if you are a pretty mutt, under all that dirt."

His breath was too warm.

"_Monsieur,_" she urged, her hand finding her stomach while the other was pressed against the edge of the table. Her fingertips danced dangerously close to the bottles of chemicals cluttering the table top. "I am not well – I need a breath of fresh air."

The guard's eyes moved to his wristwatch, reading _9:33. _"You just got here a few hours ago, girl," he snapped back at her. "You can wait until three to take your fifteen minutes of _fresh air_."

As the man turned to go, a sudden rush of adrenaline pushed through Éponine. _It's now or never,_ her mind pleaded. _You have to make him understand!_

"Wait!" she cried frantically, whipping around to stop him, to run after him, to show him she was ill and needed a break. But, as she did so, her hand knocked a bottle of liquid chromium over – knocking to the floor in a sputter. The glass bottle turned to shards, sharp and gritty and numerous across the dirty factory floor.

The sound of it shattering was enough to bring the guard to a halt. He turned around slowly, inspecting the ground for what he already knew was a waste of alloyed chemicals, and found that the bottoms of his shoes were touching the chromium spill.

Éponine gasped, quickly forgetting her upset stomach at the sight of such a fury emanating from the sharp-shouldered man. Her hands fell to her sides and her brown, almond eyes widened in utter shock. She'd never messed up this badly before – not even the day she almost hit that reporter. That time, she had been lunging at him, trying to hurt him so badly – and she'd paid for it later. But although it had only happened a week ago, all the memory she had of that day was beginning to fade. All that remained was a small circular burn in the shape of the foreman's cigar, situated on her left wrist.

But it was about to be much worse than that – this time, she was really going to pay for it.

"You're coming with me, girl," the man seethed, snatching her up by the wrist as he dragged her through the aisles, weaving through people, darting up the stairs, bringing her to the third floor. Everyone's eyes were on her as the foreman, a middle-aged man of average build and height, stood at the edge of the grated pathway.

Éponine's thoughts were jumbled, and so tied her tongue past the point of forming any eloquent thoughts. She couldn't speak, she couldn't breathe, and her eyes kept going out of focus. This was partially due to her somewhat inebriated state, but also because the girl hadn't eaten in two days.

Turning around, the foreman – whose name was Benoît L'Blanc – turned around slowly. His white hair shone in the morning light streaking through the windows. When his eyes met Éponine's, she felt a shiver rush down her spine; his eyes were cold, dark, and even more cruel than the guard's whose grip bruised her.

"What is the nature of this?" L'Blanc said, troubled, as he took a few slow steps forward.

"She tried to leave her post, sir," the guard said, tugging at her even tighter until her eyes screwed shut. "Then she threw chemicals at my boots – busted a bottle. She's not right to be working, this animal!"

"I'm not an animal," she seethed through clenched teeth, "and I didn't-"

"Girl," L'Blanc cut her off, holding up a hand to stop her, "you need not say any more." He paused, taking a short breath, and her eyes widened; the feeling of a guillotine's blade slowly raising was overwhelming. Her stomach began tying itself into knots.

"You have been working here for – remind me, how long?"

"A month, sir."

He made an _o_ shape with his mouth and paced with his hands clamped behind his back. "So you must know about our policies, one of which includes not leaving your post unless otherwise told to do so."

Éponine's breaths were shallow. She was nervous, but because of that part of her that was mouthy and angry and brash, she wasn't nervous enough.

Before she had time to think, she blurted, "I just needed some fresh air."

L'Blanc was taken off-guard for a moment; perhaps he had not thought she would talk back in attempt to justify her actions, or that she had it in her to say anything at all. His eyebrows quirked upward as he stopped in place. After a moment of processing, his eyes met hers – those eyes that were so frozen and bleak – and he began walking toward her. When it seemed that he had moved a bit too close, he took yet another step. His face was just inches away from hers, his breath palpable on hers. He raised a hand and gently moved a piece of fallen hair from her face, tucking it behind her ear with a light smile on his lips. It didn't look right, and as he spoke ever-so gently, she realized his words were coated in a thick malice that sounded all too familiar.

"If you want to be working here for more than a month, you'll learn how to control yourself," the mad said simply. "For your actions today, your pay shall be cut and you're to be sent home." The look in his eyes read that if she tried to say anything back to him, something even more severe would take place. "When you are here, you are here to work. No breaks, no time-outs, no _fresh air._ You _will_ comply, or you will go."

Éponine was stuck in a state of soundless disbelief. As she was promptly dragged from the building, her feet were the only thing that kept working. Her breathing was forced, ragged, and her thoughts were muddled. A full day's work was enough money to pay for a lot of things at home, things that needed to be bought. It went toward the rent, the heat, the water, food, liquor – everything that the Thénardiers needed to stay alive.

And they wouldn't have that now – not after what Éponine had just done.

She was thrown from the building's back entrance, escorted so kindly by the guard from the workshop as well as the guards standing in the lobby with nothing better to do.

"Take a good, deep breath," the man said. His warm breath rose in the cold air. "Hope it's worth a day's pay to you." With that, the door clanged shut and Éponine was alone.

Her hands gripped at snow, her knees feeling the chill of winter's bite. It felt fiercer now, though. The air was still, the sky was gray, and as Éponine turned her face to meet the clouds, she realized she couldn't see the sun.

With every ounce of strength she had left in her, she bent her head down and purged.

xxxxxxxxxx

Her first thought was to call Marius, because he always knew what to do to cheer her up. She lucked out when she found some change lying about in the street – just enough to make a call. The payphone was situated a block away from the mill, which she stumbled toward with one wrist to her mouth, trying to wipe away the dribbled vomit.

The street was empty – which she was grateful for.

She stepped into the booth and immediately spun around, her shaky hands finding the machine as she blinked back tears. The change clinked as it entered the small slot in the payphone and Éponine pressed the cold, black receiver to her ear.

The dial tone rang twice, and halfway through its third ring it picked up.

"Marius!" Éponine smiled through watery eyes. "It's Éponine, I-"

"Oh, hi," the voice at the other end came. A strange pause lingered on the line; the voice in Éponine's ear bubbled over with femininity, high-pitched and sweet like some sort of toothache waiting to happen. "This is Cosette, Marius is still sleeping. Can I take a message?"

Éponine stood there in silence, phone still pressed against her ear, the wind around her like choppy waves.

She couldn't breathe.

In one flash of anger she clanged the phone on its hook, letting out a strangled cry. Her hands clutched onto the phone box as she leaned up against the clear wall of the booth. She had her eyes clamped shut, trying to focus on her breathing. Before she knew it, she was heaving in and out, that sensation creeping up her throat again.

"Fuck!"

When she opened her eyes, it was all over; tears streaked down her cheeks, salty and wet and terrible. That weight on her chest seemed to consume her as she tried lifting her head up, but failed miserably. She tucked her chin down and let out ragged, ugly sobs. The tears warmed her skin as they trickled off her chin and onto her chest.

_You've had it worse,_ she thought, trying to reason herself out of complete heartbreak. _Things aren't as bad as they seem. It will get better._

But Éponine wanted it to be better at that exact moment; she didn't want to wait a month, a year, ten years – she didn't have the patience and God knows she didn't have the strength.

Perhaps the worst of it all was the feeling of complete disownment, the feeling of not being good enough for someone, unwanted, unloved, inadequate. It was this rush of depressing thoughts that sent Éponine falling to her knees, hands pressed to the floor, shaking.

She was hungry, cold, broke, and alone.

xxxxxxxxxx

Éponine didn't go home that day. She didn't have the nerve to face her father, who was going to be expecting another paycheck. All she had to show for herself were empty pockets and a bruised collarbone.

He'd be furious when she returned, but so much hurting all at once was unmanageable.

That night, Éponine slept on the streets.


	8. Chapter 8 - Two Halves

A/N: I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who has commented. I really sincerely appreciate every kind word you have said about my story, and I hope you know how much it means to me! The reason I keep writing is not just for myself now, but because of those who enjoy this. I hope I didn't disappoint this chapter, the interaction between these two is about to finally (and permanently) take off! :-)

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**CHAPTER EIGHT | TWO HALVES**

Enjolras' apartment was silent on its own, but the distant echo of _Chants de Noel_ trickled in through the less-than-soundproof walls. Beside, above, and beneath his apartment, Christmas Eve parties boomed with people walking, laughing, talking, and being generally merry.

Truth be told, it was a little much for someone who hadn't so much as their cat for company – and _Petit,_ as Enjolras had so cleverly named him, was off somewhere hiding from all of the unusual noise.

He was trying to read but wasn't getting very far due to his current circumstances.

It was Christmas Eve and at least he had the next day off – everyone did. The expendables did, anyway, and since Enjolras had not yet established himself at work as well as he had hoped, he fell into that category. But this was still just his beginning; writing a story here and a story there was worth it to him, and for the first time in a long time, he felt like his life was moving in a positive direction.

That is, if he could forget about Les Amis long enough.

xxxxxxxxxx

With heartbeats thumping out of her chest, Éponine was certain she would be heard coming a block down the road. Her throat felt swollen with a choked-back breath, which she reached up to grip with one shaky hand. Two brown eyes darted beneath her messy hair, scouring the streets for any sign of movement on the still, predictably quiet road. There was none: the nighttime in this part of town was dead.

Her footsteps were quiet and well-chosen as she started for the back door. Lights were on inside the house, but they were always left on to deter anyone from trying to loot them while they were away. She was lucky, choosing to drop by at the right time to avoid any sort of confrontation with them. It was nearly eleven o'clock, and it was likely that they were out and about in Paris, doing what they did best in the busy, crowded darkness: thieving. The slip of a hand in an unsuspecting woman's purse could feed them for a week, and the later at night they did their business, the easier it was to go undetected.

She pulled a bobby pin from her hair and began work picking the locked back door. It didn't take her long because she'd picked the locks in their house so many times she could sense what movements would bring about the familiar _click_. After a minute, the lock was released and she almost smiled before quietly entering the dank, messy house.

The first thing she did was check the refrigerator, in search of something to soothe her aching belly. There was a tub of cheap margarine that was halfway gone, the ends of two loaves of bread, and a rotten tomato near the back. These were all found amongst a handful of crumbs that scattered the shelves.

She grabbed the bread and butter and made two sandwiches, applying the spread with haste before wolfing them down. When she was finished, she was still hungry, but she was satisfied enough to forget about food and grab a few things.

A pair of pants – dirty, but useable; three shirts – remarkably clean; a pair of mismatched socks; her trusted penny loafers; the necklace her father gave her as a child that she had never pawned. She threw it all in a brown paper bag and rolled the top down, her forehead creasing in confusion as she paused to think.

It hit her all at once like a swing to the face, which made her nearly stumble backward. She was dizzy but she didn't feel sick – she just felt afraid.

_You can't leave forever, you know. _Her innermost fears were brought to light as she breathed slowly in and out, clamping her eyes shut tight._ And, even if it's only temporary, where will you go?_

But she already knew where she was going.

Before she had packed, before she had left work that night to return home, before she fell asleep in the alleyway on her own the night before... God willing, Éponine knew exactly where she was going.

As she headed out through the back door once again, her hand found the crumpled business card in her pocket.

xxxxxxxxxx

The pot of coffee on Enjolras' countertop had just finished brewing when the phone began to ring, and at once he was torn: should he answer it, or should he grab a well-awaited cup of caffeine? The temptation was strong, but he knew deep down that as much as he hated the phone, he paid the bills for a reason.

He set his book down on the table – _Cat's Cradle_ by Kurt Vonnegut – and started across the room toward the small table on which the phone sat. It was beige and clunky, and the sound of its incessant ringing was like fingernails on a chalkboard. Without a second thought, he lifted the phone to his ear, careful to watch the chord that attached it to the base, and stared sightlessly out the dark, frosted windowpane.

"_Bonsoir,_" he answered.

There was a brief silence that took him off-guard, but he steadied himself when he heard a cough on the other line. At least someone was there, rather than the misdial-and-hangup he usually got.

"How formal," came the voice on the other end. It was distinctly feminine, with some sort of brandished undertone that only came through years of smoking cigarettes or screaming at the top of one's lungs. It was sarcastic, lacking any sense of real humor or light-heartedness and somehow felt hardened. Guarded.

Enjolras thought at once that his voice must sound much the same.

"Who is this?" he snapped, averting his eyes from the window and focusing them on the panels of hardwood floor across the room.

Whoever it was, they cleared their throat and waited a moment before responding. "It's – oh, _Christ._ It's _me, _girl from the factory. One you gave your card to, said to call you if-"

"Éponine_,_" he said, cutting her off abruptly.

Suddenly, he stopped. _How did I remember her name?_ This both confused and startled him all at once.

The smirk in her voice, strange as it was, was distinctly audible. "Yeah, it's me." Pause. "And you're Enjolras, that _biloute*_ who said he'd take me up on a second interview if I ever called."

"That was a little insulting," he straightened.

"Well, _Monsieur_, it might do you some good to be insulted every once in a while_._"

He rolled his eyes, although she couldn't see it, and thought of how odd this all seemed. "I thought you had ripped it up."

"Ripped what up?"

It was his turn to smirk. "The card."

"Oh, that. I did rip it up," she laughed, "no mistake about that. I had to show you how mad I was."

"Mad at me," he mused aloud, trying very hard to remember the stairwell and the look on her face as she flung the two halves of the business card to the floor. "You certainly were."

Éponine scoffed. "And I had every right to be." Briefly, she paused. "So? Are you going to come get me or not?"

At once, the man was at a loss for words. He opened his mouth, lifted his eyes as though she were standing right there in front of him, but couldn't speak. Not even to the empty air.

When she didn't immediately receive an answer, which had simply come about from how unprepared he was at her starkness, Éponine began to second-guess herself and her decision to call him entirely. Who was she to him but a filthy factory worker who couldn't control herself the first go around? She didn't deserve a second shot – even if that _had been_ her motivation for calling him, which it wasn't.

But Enjolras didn't need to know that. Not yet, anyway.

"I mean," she started again, speaking very quickly, "if you're busy tonight I understand – Christmas and all... But I can't do it any other time, so if you really want an interview you better come now. I'm in the phone booth on Allée Isabelle."

By laying all of her cards out on the table at once, she had a 50/50 chance of getting an out, and that was better than no chance. Yes, 50/50 was better than sleeping on the streets another night.

Anything was – anything except going home.

Suddenly, his voice broke through the phone, loud and certain and steadfast. She should have been expecting it, but for whatever reason, she didn't. Éponine couldn't help jumping when she heard his stark reply echo through the receiver, and fighting to catch her breath after the phone clicked off.

"I'll be there."

That was all, and their conversation was over. It was obvious to Éponine that he was a man of few words and that his manners came off less-well than he probably hoped over the phone, but he was very much like her in that way.

She slowly lifted the receiver, glancing up out of the glass telephone booth with wide brown eyes as it clanged down onto the base in finality. The moon was up, rising over Clamart like a midnight sun. Its beams cast shadows on her face, and as she watched it, she almost smiled to herself.

Éponine was, without a doubt, a woman of the night, but a little light every once in a while didn't hurt.

xxxxxxxxxx

The longing that had suddenly taken over Enjolras was indescribable and hard for him to place. It hadn't come from any one specific thing really, but more a cumulation of so many different things slowly built and built and built, stacking ever-higher until now.

Maybe he was so anxious because he was doing this finally: getting the interview he so longed for, the one that held truth and nothing of false happiness, as others had made him believe. The real story was finally going to be his, and what he did with it afterward was a deal-breaker in how he would shape his future at _Le Figaro._ If he could really figure out what was going on in that factory, it could mean big things for him.

But, on the other hand, this sudden longing was coming from another place entirely.

Side street by side street, he tried remembering the way he had driven to Clamart, and then from the factory to the street Éponine resided on. It took him a few tries, racking his brain for the right turns to take and cursing loudly when he realized he was driving in circles. Eventually he got on the right track, but only after twenty extra minutes of being lost in the grimiest parts of the city.

He pulled onto Allée Isabelle with his knuckles white on the wheel. Winter's snowy onslaught was upon him, and it blurred his vision – even through his set of thick-rimmed, tortoise-shell eyeglasses. It didn't blur it enough to deter him from the lighted phone booth at the end of the street.

At first she was just a dark shape, but as he drew nearer, she began to focus beneath the yellow light in the booth. She looked worse than he remembered; thinner, dirtier, and emptier than the image his mind had painted of her before. Perhaps he had simply embellished this girl in his head.

He swerved to the street corner and parked the car, watching as the little door of the phone booth was pulled open. She strode over to the car with slumped shoulders and her head hung, appearing a bit defeated.

"You could have given me a heads-up before dialing me at this hour," Enjolras muttered as she slammed her door shut, still frustrated from getting lost so many times. "I don't like being disturbed so late at night. I can't imagine anyone would."

"Yeah, well."

Glancing at her from the corner of his eye, he noted that the girl was already slumped far down in the chair with her chin to her chest and her legs spread wide beneath the dashboard. It didn't look comfortable.

Enjolras cleared his throat. "It's too late for an interview anyplace in town, and too noisy." As he thought of the carolers, he nearly grunted in disgust. Sure, at first they seemed quite chipper and festive, especially during this time of year, but it seemed like they were constantly out and about, singing the same damned songs just to get under his skin. If Enjolras had to hear another poorly-chorused rendition of _L__'Arbre de Noël_ even once more in his life, it would be too soon.

"Would convening at your home be at all possible?" he offered, thinking it only logical as it was located just down the road.

"No!"

He squinted, tilting his head slightly as he examined her; something about the way she suddenly jerked upright and froze made him think twice. As much as he wanted to pry, to ask _what's wrong with your house,_ he couldn't bring himself to do it.

Éponine tried to recover from her outburst, shooting him a sideways glace. "I mean," she started again, "I was thinking we might just go to your place. I'm sure it's more comfortable than here."

It was then that Enjolras noticed the bag at her feet; peeking out the top was the striped, collared shirt that he had seen her frequently wearing. All at once, the pieces clicked together in his mind. _She packed,_ his thoughts supplied. _She was planning on staying with you._

Something about the way the words echoed in his head made him feel more confused than disturbed, which was how he probably should have felt. He didn't know what her intentions were, especially by calling him at this late an hour, and to top it off she had been planning on staying the night. _She _does_ appear that kind of girl,_ he thought. _But, on the other hand, why is her body language so guarded? So __skittish?_ Finally, Enjolras concluded that her intentions, although still somewhat clouded in his judgement, seemed to have come from a good place.

He should have taken her back home when he saw the bags and not thought twice about it. He should have retreated to his apartment, spent the night alone, finished Vonnegut's novel, and gone to sleep.

But something about the look she gave him, as the two sat side-by-side in his 1960 Peugot with their warm breath rising in the cool night air, made him change his mind. His gaze found hers, and in an instant, they were locked on each other. Dancing inside her eyes was a faint flickering, like some sort of desperate candle wick submerged in hot, liquid wax that struggled to keep its flame aglow. Nestled deep inside their dark brown endlessness was a cry for help. Fleeting as it was, he caught it.

Something struck him right then, something inside him. Not in his mind, not in his gut – but in his heart.

"You really want to try for the interview?" he finally asked her.

Éponine inhaled sharply, lifting her chin. "More than anything."

And whether she actually wanted this man to know the truth about the factory, or if she simply wanted to flee from the dark and deserted place she called home, it didn't seem to matter.

Enjolras silently shifted the car into drive and started off toward Paris.

* * *

**Translation:** _biloute_ - used in the north of France to talk about someone with a little dick, usually not meant to be seriously insulting as Enjolras took it. ;-)


	9. Chapter 9 - Fireworks

A/N: Thank you again everyone for your continued support!

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**CHAPTER NINE | FIREWORKS**

Enjolras led Éponine somewhat nervously up the six flights of stairs to his apartment, his palms slightly sweaty as they clutched at the keys in his pocket. He shifted awkwardly at the plateaus between the staircases, glancing back at her just long enough to make sure she was keeping up. He could see it in the way her chest heaved that her thin, frail body was not meant to climb so many stairs at once. Unfortunately, however, the elevator was out of order.

By the time they reached the top she was breathing loudly; he could hear her strained breaths coming up the last set of stairs as he fiddled with the keyhole, trying to jiggle it open as quickly as possible to get her inside.

"Sorry," he apologized, though it sounded forced.

"It's fine," she breathed, inhaling sharply after doing so. "I'm afraid I don't climb stairs for a living, so I'm a bit out of shape." A small laugh followed her words, but it sounded odd in Enjolras' ears.

Éponine seemed unabashedly honest, which he assumed to mean that she didn't much care for or about him; she didn't feel pressured to present herself in such a way because to her, he was just some awful excuse for a writer. Enjolras was a name and a face, but that was it.

When he finally got the door open, which did take a minute or so because of the handle's rusted condition, he held it for the girl and watched as her eyes immediately began taking in her surroundings.

The couch held a sleeping cat, the table a dog-eared, propped open book, and a radio for the sake of having one was collecting dust on the table beside his writing desk. Everything was as standard as it came, save for the typewriter that was covered in its box at the tabletop.

Still, Éponine's cheeks seemed to glow a bit more beneath the low lights.

"Not much for music, are you, _Monsieur_?" were the first words to escape her lips. She turned on her heel at the sound of the door closing, meeting his gaze. He shrugged, causing the girl to scoff and turn back around. "You know, I only say it because the only other _bourgeois'_ flat I've even been to had a piano, and a record player, and a stack of vinyls all the way up to the ceiling." She began listing off numerous other things she had noted at places other than his, much of it including little things like art and picture frames and the like – all things that this particular apartment did not have.

"I don't have time for music," he cut her off, already sensing where this was going. If he had invited her over for a personal attack of his home, his attitude might have been different. "Or fancy art, or photographs," he concluded.

She plopped down on the bar stool beneath the conjoined kitchen's countertop. "Too busy with _other_ _things_ I take it?" Something in her tone implied a sexual connotation, which was only confirmed when he caught her winking mischievously at him.

"Not the sort _you_ have in mind, I can assure you," he said, throwing his coat off him and onto a wingback chair near the fireplace. Enjolras wasn't used to women speaking this way – or, at least, the women he had ever known. When he was around Éponine, it seemed he had to try and keep up with her.

Thinking twice before heading into the kitchen, he sighed. "Can I get you something?"

"You mean, to eat?" she asked, perking up a little.

_Not really,_ he thought, but ended up opening up the refrigerator and offering her whatever she could find. Before he knew it, she was at his side, peering into the standup appliance with wide eyes.

"All you got's a bunch of veggies," she said grumpily.

"Is that a problem?"

"Guess not. It's just weird, is all." She paused, glancing up at him before cocking a hip mockingly. "So you're one of those _health nuts_, huh?"

He almost answered her, but turned on his heel instead. The pot filled with lukewarm coffee was calling his name. It was full, 10 whole cups, which Enjolras usually _did_ end up drinking all to himself. He poured a tall glass of it and took a long gulp, then turned around and leaned against the countertop to watch the girl surveying her options. She ended up pulling out a bag of baby carrots from one of the drawers and stretched its plastic open with both hands, snatching one and popping it into her mouth before even bothering to close the fridge door.

She leaned both elbows against the counter top, looking up at the man situated to her left. "Anyway," she started again, "what you're telling me is that you had no plans for Christmas Eve, and you were to sit here alone reading a book and drinking – of all things – coffee?"

He shrugged again, and she rolled her eyes. "You could have been out there, doing anything you wanted," she said, looking through the window to the veranda. "I mean, you're rich, pretty," – at this he nearly choked on his coffee – "and you've got nothing tying you down. What you should've done was call your friends and go straight to the Eiffel Tower."

For a moment, Enjolras was quiet. "Is that what you would have done?"

"Of course," she said dreamily before a dark look quickly crossed her face.

A strange feeling suddenly hung in the air between them, which was not uncomfortable but was not pleasant, either. One didn't know how to feel about the other in regards to their keeping of company, as neither Enjolras nor Éponine knew each other very well and had, at this point, accepted this. It was almost as though they were two strangers meeting for the first time.

Enjolras took another sip of his coffee, stole one more glance at the girl beside him, and headed to the living room. Éponine popped another carrot into her mouth, watching as he left while making no move to follow him, and waited for him to come back. She got impatient after several minutes of standing in the harsh kitchen lighting and begrudgingly wound around to the living room to see where he had run off to.

He was standing near the back window, peering out at the city with a sullen look in his eyes. His lips, usually pursed in perpetual tautness, had fallen limp in a moment of unguardedness. His gray eyes were focused outward, honing on the distant horizon which met the blackened sky – so focused, in fact, that he didn't notice Éponine weasel her way up beside him.

She looked from the stone man to the faraway skyline. It appeared that Enjolras was lost somewhere deep inside himself, perhaps a place he only went when he could be sure he was alone. A darkness held his features that she couldn't be certain was caused by the sky's reflection.

"_Monsieur,_" she blurted suddenly, startling him as well as herself. _Why are you so concerned?_ And when she couldn't think of an answer to her mind's prying question, shame took hold of her. _You don't get the luxury of worrying about anyone,_ she reminded herself. _Especially him._

But his eyes averted from hers before she could form words anyway, and he wordlessly opened up the glass doors to the balcony outside. Without having to ask, Éponine followed him and shut the door behind her.

Enjolras folded his arms and took a thick swig of coffee, watching the girl as she pulled a cigarette from her pocket and lit it between her lips. Its make seemed uncharacteristically expensive, and he eyed her over once more.

"You don't have work tomorrow?" she said, though it seemed more a statement than a question.

"No," came his simple reply.

"And you don't have plans?"

An image of the Café Musain on Christmas struck him. He blinked rapidly to clear his thoughts. "No."

Éponine nodded once, exhaling a long, undeterminable roll of either smoke or steam. "Good," she said finally, "because we're going out. And you're going to enjoy Christmas Day, whether you feel like it or not." She paused, looking out at the horizon once more. "And we are going to the Eiffel Tower."

Enjolras was tempted to decline, but as the words began to form in his mouth, something stopped him. He wasn't certain what it was, but it was strong and it seemed to pull him back.

In the end, he nodded, and Éponine managed a tiny smile.

After a few minutes of standing outside, both agreed that it was too cold to continue standing around, and when they went inside to grab their jackets, the warmth of the apartment greeted them too strongly to even think of venturing back outside. They ended up in the living room, Enjolras seated in the armchair and Éponine on the couch beside the small, gray fur ball.

"Your cat doesn't like me," the girl said gruffly as she tried once again to pick up Petit, earning yet another hiss and batted paw.

"He doesn't like anyone," Enjolras said, finishing his third cup of coffee with a blasé shrug.

She scrunched her nose. "Easy for you to write him off like that," Éponine muttered. "Maybe he's mad for a reason."

Enjolras laced a finger around the lip of the coffee mug, pondering for a moment. "There's no reason at all. It's just the way he is."

As if on cue, a low growl began to emit from the cat's jowl, causing Éponine to shrink back away from the cat. She quickly cleared her throat. "So how'd you get a cat? No offense – you don't really seem the type."

He was quiet, and when he spoke it was jagged and cutting. "It was a friend's."

Something in his tone made Éponine rethink prying deeper, so she didn't. The apartment grew silent, save for the flickering of the fireplace which Enjolras soon moved to stoke with another log. His face glowed beneath the light of the flames, casting harsh shadows on his bone structure's every curvature.

As he turned back around, his eyes found hers beneath his thick spectacles. He ran a hand through his blond hair, tugging at it lightly as he did so, then allowed his hand to fall to his side. His shoulders heaved with poorly-masked tiredness despite how many cups of coffee he had consumed, and no matter how stoic he tried to present himself as, there came a time at night when, in his own home, he could not project that marble-faced façade. Perhaps there _had_ been a time in his life when he appeared to have been carved from stone, from sunup to sundown... That time had passed through the ticking of the years and all of the loss he had endured – all the pain, all the suffering, and the deep-seeded regret that ate away at him when he wasn't paying attention.

Éponine might have asked if he would care to join her for a glass of wine (_his_ wine, of course) had she not seen how exhausted he was. Immediately she stood, face-to-face with the man who had, by some miracle, agreed to pick her up in Clamart and bring her home with him. His home was safe, and to be safe on Christmas Eve was a feeling she hadn't known in a long time.

She wanted to thank him, and her lips parted as if to urge the words out. _'Merci beaucoup!'_ her mind prompted her. _'Merci beaucoup,' you ungrateful child!_ But stubbornness had not yet unclipped itself from her heart. She was still the same thankless Thénardier, just as her mother and father were, just as her brother and sister had been – and that would never change.

Though neither knew it, both Enjolras and Éponine stood before each other with their own crosses bared, nearly choking on their own pain, but holding it down well enough so that it couldn't be read in their eyes.

"I am tired," Éponine finally said before folding both arms across her chest.

Enjolras was not stupid, and he could tell that this girl wasn't tired in the slightest. It was for his benefit alone that she had suggested it at all, and although he was almost positive it was a lie, he didn't have the energy to fight her on it.

"You may have my bed," he said, starting toward the bedroom. "Just allow me to straighten up-"

"No, _Monsieur,_" Éponine cut him off. She quickly spun to stand in front of him, blocking his path with her hands pressed up before her. If he would have taken one step further, they would have collided. "You don't need to cater to me. I'll be fine out here – I have slept on a couch or two in my life."

He didn't have any words for her, so he decided to let this one go with a simple nod of recognition. He stepped past her to retrieve a pillow and blanket from the closet near his bedroom then laid them neatly on the edge of the sofa.

Enjolras looked from the girl with dirt caked in her hair to the couch, then back again. Something was slipping his mind, but this sudden exhaustion was clouding his thoughts and, in turn, his judgement. Perhaps in the morning he would remember that the reason he had any guests at all on Christmas was because he was supposed to be conducting an interview, not for the sake of simply keeping company. Maybe he would remember that it was against his own morals to allow a grown woman to stay the night in his home, he who was old-fashioned in many ways including this.

But for whatever reason, he had allowed her into his home and given her a place to stay. Whether it was some form of compassion, Christmas spirit, or sympathy, he wasn't sure.

However, as much as he willed himself to deny it, a small, hushed part of Enjolras was entirely certain of one thing: he did not just invite her over for an interview.

And as he flicked off the lamp switch and bid the girl a hurried _bonne nuit,_ an unsettling feeling started in his stomach that he couldn't shake. He shut his bedroom door behind him and tugged off his shirt and pants, pulling on a matching set of red and black striped pajamas before sliding his glasses off his nose and falling down into bed. He was too tired to continue grasping at a conclusion that didn't make sense.

He was snoring within minutes, but just outside, Éponine couldn't have been more awake. She tried coaxing herself down onto the couch, which was much more comfortable than her own bed or even the couch at Marius' apartment.

_Don't start,_ her mind warned her. _Don't think too hard or you'll start blubbering again._ Which she really would have; the wounds were still fresh and the longer it had been since she saw Marius, she harder it was on her. The sound of Cossette's awful, giddy voice still rang in her ears while she battled images of Marius and her at dinner that night – a night she had sworn was a date. But, had she simply been imagining it all? Had she been coming up with some falsified relationship in her head that was never truly there? Maybe she was just seeing what she wanted to see, and maybe Marius had only felt sorry for her.

She rolled over on the couch, punching one of the cushions as she did so. _Damn it,_ she thought as pain seared through her. Her eyes pinched themselves shut tightly to stop the tears that she knew were coming.

After a few minutes, her breathing returned to normal, and she let her eyelids flutter open a fraction to test the light. Everything was dark, save for the glow of streetlights that drifted in through the windows.

_Merry Christmas, 'Ponine._

Finally, after an hour of tossing and turning, she drifted off into a jagged-seamed sleep.

xxxxxxxxxx

The sound of gunshots woke him. One, two, three-four-five and _bang –_ he jolted out of bed with wide eyes. A sheen of sweat covered Enjolras' face and chest, and he realized that he was burning up. With shaking hands, he jerked off the flannel night shirt and clutched at his shoulders.

_No,_ he thought bitterly, _not gunshots._

His feet flung over one side of the bed and slid on his slippers, arching his back slightly as he slid on his glasses and prepared to stand. He padded quickly and quietly across the floor, heartbeat racing, and made his way out into the darkened living room. As his eyes met the windowpane, a giant spark of light illuminated everything, sending shadows dancing across the room.

"Fireworks," he whispered.

As the next round went off, Enjolras jumped, still startled by what he knew was coming. It sounded too real, especially moments ago when he had been lying in bed, awoken by a flash of memories rising to the forefront of his mind. _That day in October... The blood in the streets..._

It was all too real. He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to clear his senses, but he was drowning. Flash after flash, burst after burst, he couldn't look out the window at the sparkling rivets that trickled down toward the earth. His breathing was becoming heavy as their pace increased, the blasts seeming louder than ever, the gunfire showers raining the crowd, the screams of protest, the cries, his friends, his friends...

A sound startled him from his regression. On the couch, Éponine stirred. Without thinking, his eyes opened, and he saw her curled up in a ball with her hands in front of her face. She was still asleep. He stepped forward, blinking several times to focus his eyesight; there was hair flung in her eyes, loosely draping over the contours of her cheeks and down her shoulders. Her chest rose and fell, rose and fell, evenly timed and almost too gentle to see.

Something suddenly pierced him.

_As long as love will flood my mornings / As long as my body will quiver beneath your hands / The problems matter so little to me / My love, because you love me._

The song – it was _her_ song, the one she sang at the mill on that very first day he saw her. Its melody came rushing through his ears so quickly that he struggled to catch his breath. _How did you remember?_ he thought in disbelief. _And why now?_

It was almost like a distant echo, resonating from some dark corner of his mind, playing on a loop as her voice rang and rang, and for the few minutes that he watched her, the song seemed louder than the fireworks.

Petit was curled up in the crease of the couch, tucked safely in the nook between the girl's stomach and curled-up legs. He slept softly at her side.

If it had been light and Éponine had been awake, it would have been different. But here in the darkness – safe in the nighttime's black embrace – a small smile allowed itself to enfold on his lips.

A smile he would remember in the morning.


	10. Chapter 10 - No Pictures

A/N: Another update? Twice in one week? Annie, that's unheard of! Well, guess what. It happened. Boom. Enjoy! ;-) Also, I'm doing a little dance right now! My chapters are finally in the double digits! One last thing, I would reeeeally appreciate it if you guys would comment, just let me know if you enjoy it! Thanks :-)

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**CHAPTER TEN | NO PICTURES**

Enjolras awoke to a distant humming and the smell of steam.

He rolled over in bed, running a hand down his face before squinting his eyes open to read the clock at his bedside table. It was a few minutes of staring at the analog hands before he finally was able to read _9:35_, especially through blurred vision. Clumsily, his hands snagged the tortoise shell glasses from the table and flung them on his face in a haphazard daze.

It took him a moment to remember everything that had taken place the night before; from the loud parties going on above and beneath him to the dirty street corner where he picked up a girl he'd met at some steel mill; from the stairwell to the balcony, and from the bedroom to the fireworks display at two in the morning.

_Éponine,_ he thought simply. Her name was starting to sound familiar in his head, even if only by a little. Then, as the sound of soft water and music started to sink in, he sat up in bed and sniffed twice.

_She can't be..._

He sluggishly made his way out of bed, tugging on his soft robe and walking out into the living room. The place where Éponine had slept the night before was empty, leaving a mess of wadded blankets in the girl's wake.

Enjolras didn't have to check to know where she'd gone. The shower's loud thrumming sent a faint steam seeping beneath the bathroom door at the end of the hall, and the slightly raspy twang of a melody melted through the walls. He briefly closed his eyes to listen, to appreciate it quietly for a time, before coming back down and heading to the kitchen for his morning ritual: brewing a pot of coffee...

...Which he was surprised to have been already done for him. The little red light that blinked when the pot was ready was sputtering, and as he curiously lifted the glass holding from the base, the smooth smell of caffeine hit his nostrils.

_Very strange, indeed._

He poured himself a cup and took a sip. It was hot, so he was careful not to take too much or he would run the risk of burning his tongue. The coffee was strong, just the way he liked it, and all ten cups had been brewed to his specifications. Had Éponine really figured him out so quickly? It was true that this aspect of himself was not such a secret, but it took both an observant and bold person to adapt so quickly, and to take charge enough to run themselves a shower and start making coffee in a stranger's house.

Sighing, he slid the pot back into its dock and started toward the living room. The mug got set on the table as he folded up her blankets, laid them neatly on the pillow, and stuck them once again at the end of the couch. Petit was nowhere in sight, although Enjolras' guess was that he had stirred upon Éponine's wake and immediately tried to erase any evidence he had been there at all.

He plopped down onto the couch and took a breath. It smelled the way she did – mud and sweat with a slightness of cherries. The scent stirred something in him; it wasn't repulsion, but rather a memory. Summertime in the heart of Paris – it was 1961 and he held only 19 years to his name – with a warmness radiating through the air as he biked through the streets toward the Café Musain. His skin was drenched from the heat and activity, and he was out of breath upon his arrival. Enjolras and Combeferre rode together because, at the time, they had lived on the same street, growing up as neighbors and brothers for the majority of their young lives before moving out at the end of the summer.

The café welcomed the boys, all ten of them (or eleven, if he included the little one that always tagged along). Without fail, every Friday and Saturday the two tables in the corner would get pushed together and they would talk of changing the world six ways to Sunday. They would drink and laugh and enjoy the freedom that came in each passing day without school. _Les Amis de l'ABC_ were students who took their studies seriously but knew when it was time to relax.

That summer before everything ended was the best summer of Enjolras' life.

The sound of the bathroom door opening shook him from his reverie and caused him to spill his coffee on the hardwood floor at his feet. Éponine stood in the doorway, hair up in a towel with a brown, oversized sweater hanging off her small frame. A toothbrush jutted out from between her lips.

Enjolras immediately stood, turning to face her.

"Mornin'," she said softly. A small hand – now clean – found the toothbrush in her mouth and continued scrubbing as she took a seat at the counter.

Enjolras nodded to her once in reply, to which she gave a little smirk and headed toward him. "Got you all excited now, _Monsieur_?" She flung her hair out of the towel atop her head and pressed it to the floor with her foot, soaking up the spilt coffee. Without skipping a beat, she spoke again. "How did you like your coffee?"

"It was fine," he replied shortly. "What I drank of it, at least."

"Scared you a bit, did I?"

"You startled me. That was all."

Éponine grinned smugly and stood from her stool, brushing past him to return to the bathroom. The sound of vicious water lapping at the sink's ceramic bowl, a bit of gargling, and a gruff spitting echoed through the hall. She emerged after a moment and headed for the kitchen, grabbing a glass of water from the cabinet before filling it with sink water. She took a long gulp.

"No coffee?" Enjolras asked.

"I hate coffee," she said, leaning across the countertop at him. She scrunched her nose up in repulsion.

"I just thought, after going through the trouble of making it..."

The girl took another loud gulp from the cup in her hand. "Dunno," she sighed, "it's not something I ever got in to, I suppose. Parents never bought it, I never felt the need, and I don't see myself starting anytime soon."

He nodded once, staring down into his mug before taking another sip. A strange girl she was, indeed.

"So," she started again, forcing his attention back onto her. "Still up for going to the Eiffel Tower?"

"What is it with you and that place?" he shot back. "It's just a sight to see for tourists."

Éponine was suddenly very defensive. "It's not _'just a sight to see for tourists._'" She made air quotes before flinging her hands down onto the counter with a loud slam. Her temper was rising, the one he remembered seeing at the factory – the one he had almost forgotten about the night before, as he watched her sleeping soundly.

She went on. "It's the happiest place on Earth to me. The tourists are so glad to be there, the place they save up hundreds and hundreds of their dollars just to come see, smiling and laughing, families together..." she trailed off wistfully.

And then he saw it again, that look on her face. She wasn't so quick to mask it this time which made something inside him twist sharply, much like a knife.

"_Mon p__è__re,_ he used to take me when I was little," she finished softly. Her hands, which had once been balled up into fists on the white countertop, had unraveled delicately as memories flashed in her eyes. It was almost as though Enjolras could visibly see them, but he looked away almost as soon as he had. After all, it wasn't his business, and there was no room left in his heart for harboring pain.

He then straightened. "I'll need a few minutes to get ready," was all he said before setting his cup down.

For some strange reason, Éponine brightened, and Enjolras had a strange feeling as though he'd never seen that look on her face before.

As he exited the room, Éponine grinned madly; she bit down on her lower lip, teeth starting to show, and her eyes squinted shut. She lifted one hand upward to the necklace hanging beneath her shirt, between her collarbones that still held bruises from just days before. A small charm dangled from the thin silver chain – an Eiffel Tower.

_Perhaps this Christmas won't be so bad,_ she thought to herself. _Perhaps, for just one day, you might be able to forget._

xxxxxxxxxx

In the end, they decided to walk because it was only about a mile to the Eiffel Tower and Enjolras didn't feel like trying to navigate traffic on Christmas Day. The streets were already crowded enough as it was. Many times on their walk – which was, for the most part, quiet – Enjolras found himself accidentally knocking into the girl, just as she would often bump into him. She wasn't angry this time, and neither felt the need to apologize for it. Mostly, it was a comfort to know that the other was close by and hadn't gotten lost in the crowd.

"You had to go to the Eiffel Tower _today_," Enjolras fumed as yet another stranger knocked him in the shoulder.

Éponine didn't say anything, and instead folded her arms across her chest in defense.

"I should have known this was a bad idea," he thought aloud, "and if I hear one more Christmas song I think I might go mad."

"You're talking to yourself," Éponine deadpanned. "Think you're a bit past the point of mad." And when he shot a glare at her, she simply raised her eyebrows high in triumph and smirked widely.

Just then, a chorus of _'O Peuple Fid__è__le'_ erupted in the crowd and Enjolras shriveled in disgust. However, another sound pierced his ears immediately following the choir's outburst: a raspy bell-like clamor coming from the girl on his left. _Laughter._ Her head was thrown back in uncontrollable humor as she pressed one hand to her chest. The people walking behind her narrowed their eyes at the girl, as her laughter was starting to impair the pace she had been walking before. Enjolras rolled his eyes and took her by the shoulder, leading her in front of him through the crowd.

His hands lingered on her shoulders for a moment before dropping to his sides, but just long enough for Éponine to take notice.

"You should have seen your face," was all she managed between airy giggles that began to trail off.

"You should have seen the people's faces behind you," he retorted.

Éponine pursed her lips sourly. "Well, unlike you, I don't care what other people think of me. They were probably just a bunch of spoilt brats anyway."

"Most people who come to Paris _are_ spoilt brats."

After a few minutes of silence, the girl felt herself sadden. Of course, not _everyone_ in the city was spoilt, which she knew firsthand through a certain boy living in Vanves – which might as well have been Paris due to how rich most people who lived there were.

_Having money doesn't always make you spoilt,_ Eponine thought bitterly. _It just makes you privileged._

Éponine was pulled from her thoughts as she saw a crowd of people gathering, and then as she led Enjolras out into the street from behind a building, the Eiffel Tower burst into view. A shiver crawled up her spine, a shiver that was not caused by the cold but instead by her excitement.

Trying to mask this, she tightened her lips and put both hands on her hips. She approached with Enjolras at her side, starting across the courtyard as they followed the large cobblestone pathway. Her eyes glinted as they tilted up to meet the peak, and as they drew even closer, her heartbeat began to race.

The blond at her right glanced down at her and noticed a visible shaking – like a small puppy trying to bottle its excitement. A knit hat was pressed down firmly over her ears, its bill drawing over her eyes just enough to mask them from his vantage point. In the end, however, it was her body language that gave her away; Enjolras needed only glance at the girl to know.

Éponine turned her eyes to meet the gray sky above her; it was heavy with snowflakes threatening to fall at any moment, and in contrast to the very peak of the tower's glowing lights, it seemed dark.

"I've never seen it at this time of year," she said softly. Enjolras looked over at her and saw that spark in her eyes, illuminated by something other than the faraway tower lights. "It's nice, I think. Kind of like a big, metal Christmas tree."

Enjolras was silent, watchful, and overly-observant as his eyes scanned the crowd gathering at the base of the tower. There were more people there than he had ever seen, and decided this was either because he didn't spend much time at the Eiffel Tower or because he hadn't been around Paris much in the past few years. He lived there, but he didn't see it.

Maybe that was how Éponine lived, too. Before, he had wondered why this place meant so much to a girl who had seen an unhealthy amount of campy tourists in her lifetime – a girl who lived in the same France he did, only living a few cities away from Paris, but still longed for this place.

"Time stops here," she said suddenly, as though reading Enjolras' thoughts. "It's like a little corner of heaven, you know?"

A few feet away, he heard a stout, robust woman holding a Polaroid camera shouting _bonjour!_ and _oui oui!_ at passersby.

"Yes," Enjolras replied somewhat sarcastically, straight-faced as ever. "A heaven full of Americans mocking our dialect."

Éponine almost started another argument with him, but for some reason decided against it. "Their impressions really are terrible," she agreed finally, shooting the woman and her family a sideways glance. That's when she noticed it.

"Oi, Enjolras," she said, nudging him in the side with her elbow, "that _oui oui_ lady has a camera. Let's get our picture taken!"

"No," he said without hesitation. "No pictures."

She didn't seem to hear him. Instead, the small brunette walked straight up to the woman and, in the best English she could manage (albeit her so-called 'English' was terribly broken) she requested to have a picture taken. Their conversation was comprised mainly of hand gestures, which Enjolras noted duly, and lots of overwhelmingly obtuse motions to the Eiffel Tower.

The woman said something in a southern-American accent, which Enjolras found hard to decipher (which had to mean that Éponine was clueless). The woman recognized that her translation was lost but smiled at the two nonetheless.

"No, no, _no_," Enjolras hissed at Éponine through clenched teeth. "I told you-"

"Oh, be quiet!" she interjected sharply. Éponine glanced over her shoulder at the woman who waited for them to position themselves and, after a beat of hesitation, took Enjolras by the crook of his arm, linking hers with his. Before he could object she lightly kicked him on the back of his leg; out of the corner of her mouth, she said in a hushed tone, "Just try and smile, alright?"

"Oon, doe, twahh," the woman grinned cheekily, looking through the camera's eyehole and immediately clicking the shutter.

As the flash sounded, Enjolras flinched. He had every good reason not to like pictures, as they made for an uncomfortable and fake moment that was more or less an empty memory – and, besides, he had enough pictures collecting dust in the wicker basket beneath his bed. As though he _needed_ one more.

"Vwa-lah!" Her chubby hands snagged the snapshot popping out the slit at the end of the camera. She flicked it back and forth twice before extending it out to them, her cheeks extra rosy from what Éponine assumed to be a morning spent in a cognac's loving arms. Through twangy English, the woman wished them a Merry Christmas and gave a small wave before trotting back to her family.

"Strange woman," Éponine decided aloud, "but kind." She held the photograph gently; it was still developing, and she pinched the white outer edge between her thumb and forefinger before waving it through the chilly breeze.

When she looked up, Enjolras had gone quiet, a frown etched in his lips. He seemed so serious – perhaps even a bit angry – which deterred her greatly. She found herself unintentionally pouting, looking down at her dirty boots once again. Perhaps if she had not been so forward, perhaps if she had not been so adamant and forceful...

Enjolras glanced over at the girl whose eyes were once again hidden by the bill of her cap and sighed. With one foot, he nudged her leg the same way she had done to him just moments before.

Her almond eyes found his, and he lifted his chin.

"Stop pouting," he said. His tone was softer than before. "It doesn't suit you."

Éponine quickly looked away, fighting to find something else for her attention to hold before it was too late... Oh, but it was, and that dreadful, involuntary smile was already beginning to envelope upon her lips.

After a moment, she lifted the photograph to her eyes to inspect it, then flipped it over to show the man standing across from her. His eyes squinted, peering down his nose through semi-fogged glasses.

"Hm," he said, his unaffected tone masking how much he inwardly cringed at the sight of it. Standing beside Éponine, whose grin cheesed blindingly, his glasses reflected the camera's flash like two plates of white sheilding his eyes. His chin seemed pressed back a bit too far – likely caused by how unready he was for the shutter's snap – and his lips parted awkwardly.

Éponine laughed, looking at it once more before tucking it safely in her pocket.

"I don't care what you say," she murmured – more to herself than to him. "_J'adore_."


	11. Chapter 11 - False Pretenses

A/N: One last chapter in the eye of the storm... enjoy it while you can. ;-)

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**CHAPTER ELEVEN | FALSE PRETENSES**

"Look, Daddy! Teacher says, 'Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.'"

Éponine was snuggled up on the couch with a blanket around her, sipping on a glass of red wine as the final moments of _It's a Wonderful Life_ played on the six-inch television set in the corner. Enjolras moved his gaze from the movie to the window, where he noticed a light snowfall beginning to cover the city. It was fogging up his windows, for the room was so warm that it was beginning to show.

With a sigh, he clicked the television off and sat up a little straighter in the armchair. He took a sip of his own glass of wine – the one Éponine had insisted he drink, rather than make a whole pot of coffee. _"It's Christmas,"_ was all she had to say for him to oblige, which seemed a good enough reason at the time.

The brunette pulled her knees up to her chest and crossed her arms, leaning the side of her face on her legs as she did so. Her eyes found the blonde's, who seemed tired once again – but from what, she couldn't tell. Perhaps he had not gotten enough sleep the night before...

"That was a good movie," she said wistfully. "I haven't seen a movie in a long time."

He took another drink. "It's probably better that way. Too much television rots your brain."

She snorted but said nothing. Instead, she leaned over and picked up a sleeping Petit from off the floor beside the couch. Ushering him to her lap proved easy as he stood with one paw still in the door of dozing off, and Éponine smiled brightly. Her cheeks were a little flushed, and when she glanced over at the bottle of wine near Enjolras' feet, she found it to be empty.

"More wine?" she asked, but it came out as more a statement than a question.

Nodding, he finished his glass then strode to the kitchen, pulled out another bottle of red, and brought it back to the living room. In his chest, there was some heaviness. His mind kept shouting at him: _Fool, what are you doing? Why did you let it go this far? You have no right. _She _has no right._ But he couldn't stop it now, with the momentum of her company fueling the course of the night. Besides, it _was_ Christmas and he hadn't bothered trying to see anyone in years – not his family, anyway.

He still did see his friends, but they were nothing but etched slabs of stone anymore.

"You seem different," Éponine thought aloud, holding her glass out to him. He took it from her and filled it halfway, to which she rolled her eyes and urged him to pour another quarter.

"How so?"

"When I first met you," she said roughly, "you were just like all the others. Pissed me off to see you coming 'round, poking your nose into our business. You made me feel like an ant under a magnifying glass, you know?"

He was silent. Maybe he didn't know, but it didn't mean that he didn't _care._ Although, for Enjolras to put any ounce of his heart into anything besides work anymore felt strange, and he didn't know if he was doing it right. It had been so long.

It was then that he decided she reminded him of them.

"Anyway," she finished, looking down, "I was..."

"Wrong?"

She started to shake her head but then laughed instead, throwing her head back with a fervor that echoed throughout the apartment. "You must love it when you're right." She paused. "Makes me wish I wasn't so obvious."

Enjolras' face was unmoving as ever, but his cheeks were beginning to inadvertently blush from his consumption of wine – which he hardly ever drank anymore.

"You would have lied to me, then?" he asked. "If I had asked you before, what you thought of me... You would have had me believe you despised me?"

"I would have."

His eyes narrowed slightly. "Lying is a poor trait to have."

"You're quick to condemn it," she stated openly, waving a hand through the air. "Maybe you need to be taking your own advice."

"What have I ever lied about?" the man demanded. He was becoming angry – something he often forgot he could be. _It's passion,_ his mind prodded. _It's a spark of something you used to have so much of... and she's the one who ignited it._

She smirked. "Wanting me to come over for an interview."

He didn't say a word. Instead, he stood up and headed to the corner where his shoulder bag was, to which he unzipped and plucked out his small black tape recorder.

Éponine immediately wished she could take back her words. "No, Enjolras," she started, "I didn't mean-"

"There were no false pretenses," he said hotly, standing behind the couch, peering down at her without an ounce of hesitancy eyes. "I did not mean for you to think I would have you come here, just to spend the holiday, to stay in my home with me... expecting something else."

There was a heavy silence weighing between them. Part of Éponine was insulted while the other part of her was positively astonished. She knew that it wasn't right for her to expect anything from this man, who – as he said – only desired an interview and nothing more. He wanted to tell her story, if he could, as if it even mattered anymore now that the lies had been published and accepted in France as truth. In the same token, a small part of her seemed defeated by this statement, and she didn't know why.

It _was_ bold of him, however – something she knew he was but had not seen much of due to how detached he seemed to be. It was almost as though this drunkenness had unearthed a familiarity, brushing away the dirt that disguised the man he _really_ was.

_If he didn't used to be this way,_ she thought, trying to make sense of herself. _Perhaps if things had been different for him, under different circumstances, he might still hold this passion._

"_Monsieur,_ I never took you as that sort of man."

He straightened, but said nothing.

She swallowed hard and continued. "If it's all the same to you, I'd rather we do this tomorrow – if you still desire a decent testimony." Something inside her was nervous to speak these words, simply because she was still unsure if she wanted anyone to know at all – and what difference would it make, anyway? Still, she tried to muster up as much certainty as she could in her eyes and met his. Her stomach was full of knots.

"Too much wine," he said finally.

"Too late now," she echoed.

After a moment, he strode back to his chair and took a seat. Something inside him knew he had gone too far, that he had said things he needn't have said – not tonight, not on Christmas – but he couldn't take them back in the same way he couldn't return the wine to its bottle.

Enjolras didn't know what else to say, and nothing he could do would cleanse the moment of its uneasiness. Éponine struggled for a moment to fill the void, which was passed only after downing her entire glass of wine – which the man seated across the room knew without so much as glancing her way.

"You know," she said in a brandished tone, "it might be Christmas, but it sure doesn't feel like it. This place doesn't have a shred of holly, no candy canes, stockings, nothing."

He shrugged. She scoffed tiredly.

"Got any paper?"

"Beside the typewriter." He motioned to the desk where it sat perched in the corner.

As the girl stood, Petit (who had been sleeping in her lap) shot up and batted once at her before flouncing off elsewhere. The brunette made her way across the room, plucked a few papers from the stack, took a pair of scissors from a cup filled with pens and loose paperclips, and flopped back down onto the couch.

"_Maman_ taught me how to do this when I was younger." Éponine's voice was soft, which Enjolras noted as his eyes trailed back to where she sat, cross-legged and slouched over the intricate task in her lap. "_P__è__re_ used to hang them up by the fireplace when I was finished – and we used to make dozens, Azelma and I..." The girl seemed to forget that she was speaking aloud, or else she might not have so freely spoken.

Enjolras didn't pry the way he wanted to. He had said enough to upset her. Instead, he watched as quick _snips_ sounded while a spray of white paper clippings slipped into the couch cushion's crease. The girl's motions were fluid, as though she'd done this a thousand times in her sleep; her breathing was irregular as she braced herself every now and then for a poor cut, which didn't happen.

_A strange skill for a strange girl, _he mused.

"There," she said finally with a yawn. "Finished."

Éponine held it up for him to inspect. It was elegant in a way that only the simplest of things can be. Two folds, right down the center, coming to a point with a small heart cut out of it. Tiny slits scattered across the paper's surface, and Enjolras found himself staring at the little pieces before seeing it as a whole.

"A snowflake," he murmured.

Éponine smiled triumphantly.

He surprised her as he stood from the chair at once and started toward her. She almost thought he might rip it from her hands, because of the way his brow furrowed and his chin jutted out with authority – but as he held his hand out, she rested the paper snowflake in it and watched him start toward the fireplace near the window.

From a rusted nail protruding from the wooden mantle, he hung it with care and made certain that it was straight before stepping back.

"There," she said. "Now you have a little decoration." An easy smile spread onto her lips as she said it, eyelids flickering shut with each blink. So much focus on making the snowflake, as easy a task as it had seemed, caused great stress. Maybe it was the remembering that came along with it – but she couldn't be sure. In any case, sleep welcomed her with open arms, but she fought it good and hard as she sat up a little straighter on the couch.

"You seem exhausted," Enjolras told her. "You need some rest."

"I know," she breathed, closing both eyes. "But it's only eleven o'clock, and we- we just opened that bottle..."

Enjolras almost laughed, but restrained himself. Instead, he bent down and picked up the pillow from off the floor, noting subconsciously how it smelled of cherries, and pushed it behind her in one swift movement. Éponine barely noticed the strong hand holding her forward on her shoulder until it was gone. Her eyelashes unwove themselves and as her gaze focused, she found herself alone in the room; the lamps in either corner suddenly flickered off and she tilted her head backward.

"Enjolras," she whispered through the darkness.

"Go to sleep," was his only reply.

She was quick to obey.

xxxxxxxxxx

The fireworks woke him again. Their sound nearly grabbed him by the throat and pulled him out of bed as he gasped for air, shaking. Their rumble echoed down the streets of Paris and leaked in through the crack in the doorway to his bedroom.

Somehow, they seemed louder than the night before.

Enjolras closed his eyes again, rubbing at them with jittery fingers, and tried not to focus on the headache that nearly split his mind in two.

_Bang._

Out of instinct, he made for the door and padded across the floor to the living room, where he seemed magnetized to the window as a sheen of colorful lights burst in the sky. His eyes could barely hold themselves open, but his racing heart kept him awake and too shaken to sleep. The thought of losing more sleep and working in the morning was something he didn't care to dwell on, but it gnawed at his subconscious and made him feel even worse.

_Bang-bang._

He was almost so lost in his own thoughts that he didn't notice Petit brush past his leg, the cat purring as it did so. Enjolras grudgingly bent down to pet the fur ball, looking up and out again as his attention refocused on the lights display that illuminated the distant skyline. How often had he awoken to the smell of gun smoke, of men shouting at the tops of their lungs as women cried and blocked their children from the shower of bullets?

"You awake?"

The sudden outburst sounded like a shout in the man's unanticipating ears. He shot upright, scaring the cat into a crouched position before it darted off toward his bedroom and wedging its way through the crack in the doorway.

On the couch, Éponine stirred. He saw her silhouette sit upright, hands rising upward to meet her eyes as she rubbed them gently; the blanket that had once been wrapped tightly around her torso fell to her lap, and her hands along with it.

"Didn't mean to startle you," she said, then looked up at him through squinted eyes. "You okay?"

"I'm fine," he said sharply, then realized the error of his tone. "Sorry."

"You don't sound-" she started, then stopped herself. Instead, she sighed and pushed the blankets off of her and made for the window where Enjolras stood. As she reached his side, a cascade of lights lit up the sky, followed by the loud, crackling pops of exploding gunpowder.

Beneath the glow of the lights, he could see her face for what it was, finally. No hiding behind her hair, no weariness to crease her forehead, and no anger laced in her tone to change his perception. Here, she was crystal clear: smooth olive cheeks with dark brown eyes, a curved, ski slope nose, and a mop of messy hair atop her head that was both wiry and thick at once. Long eyelashes cast shadows beneath her eyes that reminded Enjolras of dark circles he had once worn on his own face, as though they had been carved into his flesh by filthy fingertips. Those were the days he couldn't go a moment without forgetting, whereas now it was more of a dull ache.

Her collarbones popped out from the t-shirt she wore, perhaps because she was tired and wasn't focused on the way it hung on her frame.

Enjolras stopped for a moment as one more flash of light lit the room, and he swore he saw a muddy purple bruise staining the skin below her neck. But the moment passed just as quickly as it had come, and she took a step further toward the window and away from his prying eyes.

"Didn't know the city had spectacles like this on Christmas," she said softly.

"It's more a pain than anything," he groaned, scratching at the back of his neck as he, too, turned to face the window. "They don't let you get any sleep, here."

"I can only imagine what that must be like – not getting any sleep." Something in her tone made him think better of the statement, as though sarcasm's flame flickered at its edges.

He glanced down at her once and removed his hand from his neck. It fell to his side tiredly. Suffice to say, his heartbeat was still racing.

"You been up long?"

The man shook his head before gesturing to the fireworks. "No. Just got up actually... these woke me." He paused, thinking only for a stint before adding, "It sounded like gunfire."

Éponine didn't say anything in reply, though she felt she should have. The way his words hung in the air was uncomfortable, and she noticed that when she looked up at him, his shoulders shook slightly.

_He's... shaking? _she thought in complete disbelief. _The man who is always so certain and sure, the one who knows not how to smile, who knows not how to show any semblance of emotion, is shaking. But why?_

Silently, she slipped her hand inside of his. He didn't look up, and neither did she. They both understood what this was: assurance. Though Éponine didn't understand, and she wasn't going to try – at least, not now – she could at least show him what she remembered of compassion. And somehow, with his hand so tightly curled around hers, the night stopped unraveling and they were the only ones awake in its stillness.

The girl's sudden words cut through the silence like a knife. "I know this all seems too good to be true," she said groggily, almost leaning over to rest her head on his shoulder. "I know that it's all going to be different tomorrow, when I go back to the factory and you to your office... but it has been nice. Really."

He swallowed back the words that threatened to leave his lips: _I don't want it to be over._ Maybe these thoughts were merely hallucinations brought on by tiredness, or the wine that still tainted his blood, or even because she was the only one who didn't seem to mind his company. Whatever it was, Enjolras hated that he couldn't justify these ideas, and because of it, he scowled.

Éponine took her hand back and rested it across her opposite shoulder. This was their goodbye, the real one that would mean more than the farewells he had planned in the morning. It was tonight, and it was happening, and when she looked over at him, he was looking at her too.

But before she could say anything, his eyes flickered to the window.

"The fireworks stopped," he murmured with finality. "I should head back to bed."

She nodded. "Me, too."

Before he turned on his heel, he gave her a small smile – one that she could see, even through the darkness. "It has been a pleasure, _Mademoiselle._"

She curtsied mockingly, grinning a little as she did so, and stumbled back to the couch. And as she fell into its comfortable cushions, and as the sound of Enjolras' bedroom door closing met her ears, she couldn't help but think that – for what little it was worth – she was glad to have crossed paths with the man of marble.

Even if it was just this once.

xxxxxxxxxx

The next morning, Enjolras stumbled out of bed at the sound of his alarm clock buzzing loudly, sliding into his slippers and pulling on his robe as he walked in the living room. Out of new instinct, his eyes went to the couch where he assumed the girl to still be sleeping, but stopped immediately when he found her missing.

He looked left, then right, and when she was neither here nor there, he called out her name. There was no reply.

xxxxxxxxxx

Just outside, the girl with olive skin raced down the street, a brown paper bag clutched tightly in her arms. Her heart was beating fast, a little afraid that the man who had intended to get a story out of her would wake up too soon, and that he would come looking for her when he found her gone.

_This is betrayal,_ the little voice inside her head prodded sadly. _You said you would tell him what you knew and you left._

But despite the lingering fear, a part of her almost wished he _would_ come down, running after her, grabbing her by the wrist and dragging her back to his flat.

She wondered why that was.

xxxxxxxxxx

In the easing sunrise of his dingy home, Thénardier waited.


	12. Chapter 12 - One Fell Swoop

A/N: I mean... hey... the important thing to remember here is that you gotta have a little rain to appreciate the sunshine :''')

* * *

**CHAPTER TWELVE | ONE FELL SWOOP**

Enjolras pulled a hat on over his head, causing the ends of its curly mass to muffin at the bottom before throwing a scarf on and heading out of the office building where he worked. Marie, the clerk at the front desk, gave him a quick wave which he halfheartedly returned. Winter's winds smacked past him as the door opened, and he pushed his shoulders higher, pressing both arms closer to his sides to keep the warmth contained on the walk to his car.

The sun had already set, though it was only seven o'clock. Enjolras' breath rose in the cold of the air and for some reason, it reminded him of smoke – _her_ smoke – from two nights before. The way it wafted through the breeze, how the cigarette's nicotine stung his nostrils, and the way he couldn't tell if she was smoking or if the chill had merely taken to her breath.

_She's probably getting out of work now,_ he thought, unlocking his car door. _You could see her if you wanted._

But it wasn't what _she_ wanted. She had been the one to leave, the one who couldn't bring herself to open up about the fear stinging deep inside her, the unfathomable terror she experienced each time she went in to work. Éponine didn't want to tell anyone, and it was better he realized it then, rather than continue waiting around. The girl was like promised rain in a drought.

He sighed, flicked on the ignition, and drove home.

xxxxxxxxxx

At one fell swoop, everything reverted back to the way it was.

xxxxxxxxxx

Éponine left work that night with a heavy heart. Her raw hands still gripped the paper bag, though its load seemed lighter than before. Even the cold didn't feel so bad when the overwhelming dread of walking home took hold.

She must have walked around the block five times before stopping, sucking up the few ounces of courage still left in her and facing the back door.

Her eyes met those of a man in the alleyway, familiar eyes. She'd seen him before.

"Do you have a franc to spare, _Mademoiselle_?" he asked, holding out a tired, dirty hand.

She shook her head sadly, biting down on her bottom lip as she reminded herself that things could be worse. _Things can always be worse. _The thoughts echoed in her head like a tormenting jibe; her ribs ached, as though someone were poking her, laughing, waiting for the real entertainment to begin. And there would be a show tonight, if things went the way she knew they would.

The back door was creaked open, as though ushering her inside. Éponine took one last deep breath.

He was waiting at the table. A sharp blade twisted in his hand, picking at his rotten teeth before pulling it away to inspect its sheen. The man with fried reddish hair flickered his eyes over to the girl who stood at the door so terribly still. His eyes were sharper than the knife.

"There she is," he grinned toothily. "The madam of the hour, the belle of the ball."

"Hello," she said tightly. Her face felt hot. All at once, the girl was very aware of everything in the room – the smell, the yellow light that hung overhead, the glint in her father's eyes as he stood and looked down at her with strange inspection. She felt the breeze that his rotted coattails created as he pushed his chair back, and as he walked toward the cupboards across the room.

It was torture to know what he would do to her, while all she could do was wait for it to start.

"Oh, my _girl_," Thénardier smiled, "no need to be so hostile – I'm certainly not. Did you have a fine Christmas?"

She didn't say a word, and instead pinched her eyes shut tight. _Don't think about Christmas,_ her mind urged her. _Don't think about Enjolras; don't think about Marius; don't think about even one good thing in your life or you'll taint it forever._

At once, his voice carried through the kitchen like a tremor.

"_Look at me!"_

And with one more deep, shaky breath, she did.

The old man spit into the sink, filled with molding dishes and maggots that ate away at the filth. He turned back to Éponine with an intensity this time, gold eyes bulging widely with ferocity. But as much as Éponine wanted to step backward, she stood her ground. She was afraid, but she wasn't going to avoid this any longer.

In her mind, she felt this was deserved.

"You've cost us dearly, girl!" His mouth twisted into a snarl. "We missed the rent again an' it's all _your fault!_ We've got the collectors on our ass – an' you know your mother an' I do what we can to keep a roof over your head, but if you can't pull your share-"

He grabbed her upper arm and yanked her from her position at the door, his fingertips seeming right at home against her skin. His hands had bruised her too many times. She didn't try to fight him, but she couldn't help flinching as his unprecedented strength jerked her. The bag in her arms fell to the floor.

"This is the last time you cheat us out of what's ours!" he snapped, and his fist collided with the side of her face effortlessly. The girl stumbled backward, but not far enough to be out of his reach; with one swift shove, Éponine was tossed to the ground like a rag doll. Her head collided with the hardwood floor which was destroyed beyond repair, and for a moment, everything went black.

Thénardier bent his head down low to the ground, his tone deep and gravelly. The smell of liquor stained his breath.

"Where's the money?" he glowered.

She almost lied and said she still had to pick it up from work, or that she forgot it at Enjolras' – whatever it was she had to for everything to stop – but since she was already in pain and had been struck to the ground, something snapped in her and the idea that things couldn't get any worse took hold.

"They cut my pay," she said, "and I left the rest of it with a friend."

Not that he knew – or that he had to know at all – but Éponine had left the francs she had earned on Christmas Eve with the man who had opened his home to her. She had wedged the notes between the pages of that Vonnegut book she saw the man reading; the money was not given away simply because she felt she needed to be courteous (which, for the most part, she was not), or that he might need it at all (which he clearly didn't).

No, Éponine had left the money because she didn't want her father to ever find it. It wasn't much, of course, but in a brash act of fury before leaving Paris that morning, she had a sudden thought that when she returned home at the close of the day, it was all or nothing.

And the girl couldn't have it all.

He pressed the bottom of his boot to her face and crushed her head deeper into the floorboards. She let out an audible cry as her ear pinched tightly and her jaw resisted the pressure, centimeters from a dreadful snap.

"You're a liar!" he shouted. "You spent it, you greedy piece of shit!" He gave one last good shove and she felt her head begin to throb perpetually.

"Shouldn't have come home at all," he muttered to himself. "Two days' worth of pay... And after all we have given you-"

"We gave her what?" the tone of her mother cut in. Dirty feet smacked hard against the floor as she waddled toward them, hair falling in her eyes as she did so. "Talking 'bout 'Ponine? Talking bout the money she _stole_ from us?"

Éponine stayed silent, one hand rising upward to caress her throbbing jaw. Thénardier kicked her hand quickly away and kept a foot at her wrist.

"She won't be stealin' from us no more," he said with certainty, though his eyes flashed down at her crumpled form on the floor once again before continuing. "That girl don't know her place. Got to pull her own if she wants a place to stay."

"Had to learn somehow," Mme. Thénardier said in mocking sweetness. "Poor Mademoiselle couldn't run forever, but when she gave up... Hm. Girl had to have known we'd been waiting up her." Each word came out short and choppy, like fingernails slowly dragging down a chalkboard. Their cadence was off-balance in the same way the woman was.

"Worried sick, we was," the wolf said; his words sounded brutish in her ears.

Mme. Thénardier turned to her husband and spoke in a slightly hushed tone, one that was masked but not well enough for Éponine not to hear.

"She bring home the money?" she asked, to which he shook his head quickly.

"Spent it all. It's gone."

Éponine laid perfectly still, adrenaline coursing through her blood which rushed to her head and made her dizzy. Her eyelids seemed peeled open as each thought crossing her mind made less and less sense, and as she stared off distantly at her father's out-of-focus shoes, she didn't even have the decency to stand up for herself. The words she might have spat back at them sank back down her throat, remembering what happened when she talked back.

Her gag reflex kicked in at the rising memory – his hands around her neck, struggling to breathe, gasping, choking, light leaving her eyes before tossing her to the ground...

"Won't be letting her out of my sight from now on," Thénardier snapped.

"Shouldn't've let her out to begin with!" his wife hissed. She took a step toward Éponine and, with a ragged cough, she spit on the girl. Éponine winced tighter. "Little bitch went out and squandered the lot!"

A clang sounded, and when Éponine's eyes refocused, she saw her father with a frying pan in his hand. Her heartbeat began to race, and when he raised it above his head, she couldn't tell who it was directed at.

"Alright, alright!" the woman said, raising a hand above her eyes, freezing the man whose eyes were blazing with bestial rage. "She'll just have to get the money back, won't she?"

It suddenly appeared as though a thought had struck Thénardier; he stalled, and after a moment, shrunk back and lowered the frying pan. His eyes found Éponine on the floor. She resembled a butterfly whose wings had been torn.

"Get up," he said, "before the others come in and find you."

_Wouldn't want to cause them any discomfort,_ Éponine thought contritely. She almost said the words aloud, but when her lips parted, nothing came out except a bit of blood lacing her spit.

With that, Mme. and Thénardier strode from the room, out the front door as a series of headlights peeled in the driveway. The door was shut tightly a moment after the light reached Éponine's eyes, causing her to wince momentarily at their brightness.

Her head was pounding. No, more than pounding – it was throbbing, pulsing, hammering. The pain was white hot.

When she was certain that no one could hear her, she let the prickling sensation at her eyes consume her body. "Fuck you," she spat, blood sputtering to the floor as her face crumpled. No tears – nothing but fury. Hatred.

As the sound of so many pairs of footsteps and voices drew nearer to the front door, Éponine picked herself up off the ground and stumbled down the hall, into the darkness of her bedroom, sinking down onto the ground and curling into a ball.

_I will not cry. I will not cry. I will not cry._ She repeated it wordlessly as a mantra, trying to think of anything but her father's eyes – eyes that hated her, just as she hated him. But their hate stemmed from two different places: for Thénardier, it was out of greed, but for Éponine, it was out of love. She loved him so much, even still, even though their family was crumbled and there were cracks running through its core. She loved the man who used to hang her snowflakes on the fireplace, who would bring her gifts on Christmas, who was a menace and a coward even then...

But at least he used to try to love her back.

A burst of sound rang in through the house, and she could hear each and every voice booming from the throats of the _Patron-Minette _who now laughed and joked in the place she had just been struck. There they stood, in the very spot her father had crushed her head into the floor with his boot, where her mother spat on her, where her skull was nearly cracked by a frying pan.

_I will not cry._

It was a half hour before the door to her room was opened, letting light pour in briefly before it was closed out again. She didn't have to look to know who it was; all she had to do was smell them, to hear their breathing, to wait for their hands to find her.

"Montparnasse," she breathed slowly.

He didn't speak. Instead, he bent down to where she stood on the floor, turned her over to her back – _god_ it ached so badly – and threw one of his legs over her middle.

Those lips. She had felt them so many times against her own, and yet she couldn't remember what they felt like. Curved, yet sharp and cutting. They seemed to swallow her own, and as her mind floated away, it never went far. She could come back down without a moment's notice, and as his kisses deepened and his hands moved faster, Éponine could feel that brief high slipping.

It was a trick she had to play for her own sake. Pretend snow isn't cold long enough, and eventually you'll stop freezing. In the same way, Éponine had to pretend that her father did not beat her, that she had not felt his selfishness and cruelty and neglect come at her like wave after crashing wave, and that none of this was real.

_But your life is no fantasy,_ her mind retorted as a sharp sting of pain struck her chest. _Marius is with the beautiful girl in the beret. Enjolras' flat was no safe haven. You cannot continue having yourself believe that you deserve anything more than what is right here in your arms._

Montparnasse grinned wickedly as his hands clamped down on her sides, following down the curvature of her hips before his tongue found the spot just below her belly button.

She gasped – and he heard it, but he pretended not to.

Fingertips found the elastic of her underwear and tugged them down. Her breath hitched. This wasn't what she wanted.

"St-Stop," she urged him, sitting up a little.

"You want this," Montparnasse said between kisses.

Éponine could hear it in his tone – he was not listening. She tried to fix her legs together again but his grip was firm and his tongue was fast.

Her hands found his head and she shoved it once – hard – and _finally_ he got the message. His eyes glinted madly in the moonlight streaming in through her window. Immediately, she wished she had closed the blinds.

"What the hell is your problem?" he swore, hands grabbing her knees. His breathing was heavy. "You always let this go so far and stop before it goes _anywhere_!"

"'I'm not ready,' I said!" Her voice shook.

"But when are you going to understand?" The man moved dangerously close, lips hovering just above hers. His words suddenly came quiet as his change of tone flipped in an instant. "_I am_."

She didn't speak; she didn't even try. If she had, she might have said something wrong and he would have hit her and there would be no more _this_ – something she couldn't tell if she wanted or did not want, because her mind told her it was good while her heart seemed to whisper: _You are digging your own grave._

After a moment, he leaned back and looked down at her, as if finally realizing that this girl was no more than a child. His face seemed strangely pensive, however, and after much contemplation, he spoke again.

"You owe your father."

This took Éponine off-guard, and a feeling of sickness rose in her throat. Her head began to pulse again, and she thought of throwing up.

_I had almost forgotten._

She cleared her throat. "Yes."

Montparnasse smiled, though something else was there. "And you know what I want."

"Which is?"

His chin raised, and down his scarred nose with a whopping bend on its length, he stared at her. He was waiting. Perhaps this showed that he, too, knew how to wait. But when she shook her head, seeming to say _I don't know_, he sighed.

"I want _you_."

The girl didn't get it until the silence began to fall quicker. In the way that he looked at her, or rather, the way he looked _through_ her, a realization clicked and her eyes popped open wide.

She swallowed hard. "You mean..."

"I can pay you." And with that, the man slid a single coin from his pocket. He slipped it into her hand, and when she brought it to the light, she could make out the few numbers on its face: _100._

"A hundred francs?" she gasped. "That's more than I make in a day!" She had almost said _more than I make in a week_ because it was truer, but it sounded terrible and made her feel even worse. When the question of where he must have gotten it crossed her mind, she realized she didn't really want to know because it was probably a severely punishable crime. Who did it belong to? Was it really the man's, whose hands were still soft from never committing to a hard day's work?

This offer felt like a devil's bargain.

"No," she said, her voice suddenly quick as she pushed the coin back to Montparnasse. "How many times do I need to tell you? And for money? I cannot."

"Yes, you can," he said, urging the coin back to her.

She almost snapped something cruel back at him, but could not think of anything because of how smooth the coin felt in her hand. Its bronze sheen felt warm. Money was good.

But _this_ money was filthy – it was dirty, it was cheap... and as she stuck the coin in her wadded-up pants' pocket, _she_ felt dirty and cheap.

She took a deep breath but stayed silent.

"We can start slow," he whispered, his lips coming down on hers, moving cautiously. Hands found her hands, holding them softly. He was oddly careful, and almost seemed a new man because of this apparent attentiveness.

But slow only lasted so long, and before she knew it her shirt had been pulled off, along with her brassiere. Here in the darkness, she was open as she had never been before. Her body breathed, and as though trying to match this natural breath, he pressed his chest to hers... But they did not fit one another.

Montparnasse moved back, removing his own clothes, then returned to her. His knees were on the floor, legs on either side of where she lay, and suddenly she felt him upon her. A fear twisted in her eyes that could not be masked. He waited.

"We don't have to do _this_ tonight," Montparnasse murmured, knowing she understood. "But I still need to finish."

She bit her lip, fidgeting beneath him, and when he tried to kiss her she seemed to resist.

He sensed her loss of words, proceeding to lead her with both hands, pulling her shoulders until she was on her knees, too. And then he stood, looking down at her again in the same way he always did – but somehow differently – and rested a hand on her head.

"Have you ever done this before?" he asked, but even as the words left his lips, he knew the answer.

Éponine closed her eyes and dove into another nightmare.


	13. Chapter 13 - The Pistols

A/N: Yes, I know this chapter is short, but it kind of had to be. Their backstory that I keep on alluding to is coming soon, so don't worry if you're still a little in the dark! Basically, this is just a necessary chapter that I couldn't skip over. Chapter 14 is already written though, and I'm going to post it later today! (Also, a big thank you to everyone who comments, and to agnesgreys on Tumblr for making a graphic based on a scene in chapter 11!)

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**CHAPTER THIRTEEN | THE PISTOLS**

The Doors' record was spinning on the player in the corner while the smell of cigarettes hung in the air, a cloud wafting in the air above the bed. It was early morning, well past one o'clock, and Marius Pontmercy was laying in bed. He was smiling for no apparent reason, other than the fact that his sheets still smelled like her – floral, sweet, and delicate. He took a deep breath in and became lost in thought.

He was consumed in the feeling of being dragged under the surface until he was drowning, gasping for air, but he didn't seem to mind. It was nice to feel so hopelessly passionate about something for once.

His thoughts were preoccupied with thoughts of summertime in Paris, with Cosette's love lighting his days – and in many ways, it already felt like July.

But as his mind began to run through the motions, over and over as Cosette danced in his mind like a colorful whirlwind, the sound of a distant shot rang in his ears and he looked up. Hanging above the dresser across the room was a pistol, which had originally been part of a set of two, but its brother had been given away to a dear friend of Marius' some time ago. There was no telling where in the world it was, or if it even existed anymore, at all.

The sound of a distant ignition of gunpowder and the sound of hysteria in its wake echoed inside Marius' head.

_Just a memory,_ he reminded himself, but became so uncomfortable sitting there placidly that he suddenly felt the need to stand.

Marius paced about the room, remembering Cosette and how she had laughed when he told her it must be love – even if it had only been a week – and the look in her eyes after he kissed her, full on the mouth. It was warm, but not heated, frantic, or forced. When she was with him, everything seemed easy.

But when left alone with his thoughts, it was easy to forget the good things.

The sound of the needle hitting the center of the record scratched and he moved to it. He lifted the vinyl and slid it back into its sleeve, then rested it atop the heaping pile of records that floated about his house, never in one place for any longer than a few days.

He took one last drag of his cigarette and put it out in the ashtray near the window. Then, he made his way across the room, took one last long look at the pistol, and remembered the way it had felt in his hand that night. Cold and powerful, yet he was powerless all the same.

A hand came up to his shoulder and he felt for the place where an old wound had healed to a scar, roughly the size of a bullet. _Escaping by the skin of his teeth,_ the doctor had said, whom his grandfather had ordered to their home to treat Marius' injuries in secrecy before they moved across France – fleeing from any trace of Marius' involvement in the massacre. They were starting over from scratch, alone.

One last memory flashed in his mind before the phone rang (which of course was Cosette, calling to remind him of their New Year's Eve plans that he was not, under any circumstances, allowed to bail out on).

But this memory was as fleeting as it was painful.

A pair of eyes, gray, and a tight smile. Blond, messy hair with thick-rimmed glasses and a loud, passionate voice that made everyone in the room stop and listen. The smell of wine and cigarettes – _A café,_ he reminded himself – and muted laughter in the background.

The boy in his mind was tall and strong, and although only nineteen, he seemed to have lived a hundred lives before.

And then, as the smoke finally fell in the room, and as the phone began ringing off its hook, Marius' eyes refocused and he remembered that the boy from his memories was no more alive than the rest of his friends who had died that night, and he was the only one left.

_We were like brothers,_ he thought as he cleared his throat to answer the phone.

_Enjolras._

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Across town, Enjolras slept with a crease in his forehead, a constant furrowed brow acompanying his uneasy slumber. His flat was quiet, just as it always was, and Petit was out in the living room, sleeping on the couch that still smelled like nicotine and cherries.

But just under his bed, underneath all of the photographs and hand-written letters, laid a cigar box. It hadn't been opened in a long while; dust was beginning to collect on its surfaces.

Inside that box was a pistol.


	14. Chapter 14 - Consumed

A/N: ...And, as promised, chapter fourteen. This one took a while to get out, sorry! I realized halfway through writing this chapter that I needed to add the now-13 in for background purposes. Hope this did not disappoint, and is much longer than the last to make up for its brevity! :-)

(I posted two chapters today, so if you didn't happen to read thirteen, read it first!)

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**CHAPTER FOURTEEN | CONSUMED**

It had been five days since the last time he saw her. When Enjolras would come home to the empty apartment, when he would make coffee in the morning, when he looked out onto the balcony – he could see her there. On the couch, at the counter, in the shower's hazy steam, she was always there.

Éponine had become something more than a memory.

He had not been back to Clamart since the night he picked her up from the grimy phone booth, and although that part of the city was caked beneath dirt and grease and poverty, a part of him longed to go back. Perhaps it was all of those things that drew him there in the first place. It was real, unlike so many things in his life.

_I wish I could help you,_ he thought as he looked out the window from his office cubicle, which was as empty and undecorated as his flat was. Sunset was becoming, and the world was set under hazy tones of gray.

Behind him, someone cleared their throat.

Enjolras spun around quickly, his gray eyes shooting upward to meet the hazel ones of a man, balding and in his mid-fifties.

"Enjolras, my boy," Henri Dupont bellowed, pulling up a deserted chair from another cubicle as he tugged at the straps of his suspenders. "How's the story coming?"

"Just fine, _Monsieur_," he said, although it wasn't at all what he wanted to be writing about – a French rugby team's tour to South Africa, something of which he held no interest in but perhaps the paper's many readers would.

The man grinned and clapped his back, none the wiser. "Good to hear. We've all noticed your hard work lately and I just wanted to let you know, we really appreciate your dedication." He paused. "Your writing reflects it."

Enjolras didn't quite know what to say, in part because the paper had not been the only thing on his mind lately, despite the long hours he had stayed awake at night preparing for interviews and writing and editing his own work. No, lately his mind had been elsewhere, and even though Dupont's compliments were to be duly noted, he didn't honestly feel that he deserved it.

"_Merci_," he said nonetheless, and started to turn back to the typewriter at his desk.

"Wait just a minute," Dupont started, standing from the chair. Enjolras immediately turned back toward him and looked upward expectantly. "What I really came over to ask – and I know you're trying to work hard and such – was what in God's name you're still doing here?"

Confusion turned cold in his chest. "_Monsieur_?"

The man nearly laughed, bringing a hand up to the back of his balding head in disbelief. "It's New Year's Eve. Surely you have noticed that you're the only one still left here...?"

That's when it seemed to click; as he surveyed the office, and as he listened a little closer, the only sounds being made were coming from the Xerox machine in the corner as it copied page after printed page. The floor was deserted. Perhaps he had been too focused on his piece, too enthralled in turning what he had on his tape recorder into written words, that he had failed to notice that everyone else had gone. Or, perhaps his mind had been on other things.

"Go," the man said, pushing the chair back to to its proper cubicle and looking back at him once. "Go find a beautiful girl, get some champagne, and spend New Year's at the Champs-Elysées like a normal man your age, alright?"

Enjolras nodded once and the man left. He turned back to his desk, heaved a sigh, and began the process of packing up all of his things. But as his fingertips lingered above the tape recorder, he stopped – remembering – and settled back in.

Unzipping his bag, his hand dove into the inside pocket and pulled out a mess of tapes. Each were labeled neatly, all except for one.

He wasn't thinking this through.

Taking the unmarked tape, Enjolras slid it into the recorder as he popped the other casette out, then clicked the play button. Again, sounds of the steel mill hit his ears – loud clangs, people talking, shouting – and he fast forwarded a tick before releasing it and waiting.

And there it was: her voice. It sounded clearer than before, though; this time, her voice seemed easier to hthanks contrast to the first time he had played it back in his home.

His breathing slowed and he leaned over the table, staring down at the small black recording device. Slowly, his eyes traveled upward, and he found himself entranced in the gray cloth of the cubicle wall; this did not mean, however, that he was not seeing anything, for in his mind, he was back in the steel mill. She was there at the table with her hair pulled back haphazardly into a low bun, and she had dirt on her cheeks. Her eyes were daggers when they found his.

He was driving her home, down the backstreets of Clamart, and then he was picking her up at the telephone booth. Her face when she came out of the bath, her melody high in the air... There she was, her life a melody sung to the tune of coffee brewing in the morning.

And then they were at his apartment, sipping wine, talking about the annoying residents and their deafening parties, watching _It's A Wonderful Life_ and trying not to think about what would happen in the morning.

Then back to the mill. She drove circles through his mind as the words came grainy through the tiny speaker.

_As long as love will flood my mornings / As long as my body will quiver beneath your hands / The problems matter so little to me / My love, because you love me._

"That's very pretty," Dupont's voice came, and Enjolras, startled, jumped in his seat. He quickly fumbled with the tape recorder and silenced it, earning a hearty laugh from the old man before he left once again, this time for good; the door clicked shut behind him and the office was silent once again.

With a slightly crimson complexion, Enjolras shoved the device in his bag and made for the door.

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He _really_ wasn't thinking this through.

Enjolras clicked the keys in the ignition and started off down the road, first making for the back streets that were only a bit less crowded than they were in the city, but there were still people of all walks of life cutting across the streets. He honked his horn loudly at them but they didn't seem to care.

But when he was halfway home, he realized he didn't want to be there by himself. It wasn't as though he were afraid to spend a holiday alone, because that really wasn't the case. He had become accustomed to spending much of his life in solitude, so going home alone tonight was the only natural thought. However, when Enjolras caught himself white-knuckling the steering wheel, found his breathing tense, and noted the frown caused by such a clenched jaw, he decided that it was time to take action – to do what his gut told him was right.

Something he had not done for himself in such a long time.

xxxxxxxxxx

Éponine was starting to pull on her coat when she was stopped by Pourlevaire, the man who worked across from her. He had already grabbed his own, a long trench that was made of worn leather and hit him just below his knees. Just as he had buttoned the top button, he leaned one hand against the table.

"Girl," he said gruffly, pausing to look her over once. "Your eye."

"I know," she mumbled. "You've been staring all day."

The man laughed half-heartedly. "Didn't think you'd noticed. Guess you're a bit more observant than I give you credit for." And as he turned to leave, he called over his shoulder: "_Bonne année.*_"

She looked up over her bag and met the gazes of a few men standing across the room. Maybe they saw the bruise crawling down her neck, or maybe they were taking in the simple fact that she looked guzzier than usual – but it was probably the redness in her left eye that had them so transfixed.

Sometime between the previous night and that morning, a blood vessel had popped in the white of her eyeball, a fit of red consuming nearly half of it. It didn't feel any different, but she was sore all over and she wondered if it had been caused by recent stress.

Wiping at her mouth, she felt the urge to spit. It had been five days and she still could taste him.

Watchful eyes followed her out of the building that day. Éponine looked upward at the guards who stood along the ramps above, one in particular meeting her gaze directly. She'd seen him before. He seemed to smile and it made her feel nauseous.

A few francs jingled in her pocket, and at this, the girl's spirits were lifted a little. Money had never felt this good in her possession before, perhaps because she had started taking the peace it bought her for granted.

The city lights were violent and cold as she left the building, a breeze ushering her out into the street before sending her on her way, down the road and toward home. The sound of so many cars revving their engines and awakening in the night met her ears like some sort of mechanical symphony. Inside the factory, the low rumble of the machinery being switched off shook her lightly.

Eyelids fluttered shut and, suddenly, she was there with him; his arms were around her, holding her close to shield her from the chill of winter, even as she began to shudder.

A breath whistled between her lips as she pursed them and blew gently. How she wished she could see Marius.

_You will see him,_ she thought, blinking her eyes open with a hopeful smile tugging itself upon her lips. _That girl can't stop you._ And with a burst of exhilaration filling her chest, she wondered if perhaps she shouldn't just walk over there right now... If, perhaps, he was missing her too. After all, it wasn't as though his feelings toward her could have changed overnight, as hers certainly hadn't – even if it _was_ only friendship.

_But it's New Year's Eve,_ she thought sadly. _He probably has other plans._

Éponine made it a half a block down the road before a sharp horn being honked startled her, jerking her from thoughts plagued with loneliness and guilt and opening her eyes to reality. She spun on her heel, her gaze turning to take in a pair of bright headlights that looked familiar; they might have belonged to one of her father's friends – maybe Montparnasse. An awful feeling stabbed at her gut. Her pace quickened, but the car wasn't slowing and seemed to match her rhythm effortlessly.

"HEY!" the person in the car shouted.

She faltered; it was the voice a man, but not the man she was expecting.

With wide eyes, she looked to her right, her eyes meeting the driver's in a single, frozen moment.

Éponine let out a shaky breath. "Christ._" _

Immediately, the girl took off down a side street, but the car was quick to follow her and it did so without hesitation. Unfortunately, there were no alleyways nearby to cut down and no matter how fast she tried to run, she just couldn't seem to run fast enough.

The car honked again, and with its final blaring sound, she knew there was no getting away from him.

Her pace slowed and she sighed, eyes turning upward to meet the starry sky. Her shoulders sagged and she laughed once, cynically. "You're not going to get an apology from me, _Monsieur_," she said softly, eyes still glued to the darkness above, her heart-shaped face illuminated by the moon.

Enjolras pressed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and leaned out the window. _What are you doing?_ his mind seemed to shout at him._ What the _hell _are you doing?_ Nighttime air rushed in through the window and he would have shuddered had it not been for the crimson tweed jacket keeping his shoulders warm.

He looked at the girl whose shoulders shook openly, covered by a dingy, moth-eaten number with long tears in the front near its buttons. He took note of her eye and the redness swollen within it.

Five days without seeing her and she looked as though she'd been through hell. His stomach sank, but instead of saying anything about the awful mess she looked tonight, he cleared his throat and said the four words he'd been replaying in his mind ever since deciding to come find her.

"Get in the car."

This order, simple as it was, startled Éponine. She looked at the man sitting in the car and saw the rigidness of his expression, the way his gaze seemed focused yet misplaced, like he was looking at her but didn't understand what he was seeing. She could read it in his gaze because she knew her own was identical.

_Maybe I _want _to know you,_ she thought absentmindedly, but inwardly kicked herself as soon as she thought the words. _No you don't. There isn't a man on this earth you'd ever want to know._

"What'll you do if I don't?" she said finally, folding her arms across her chest.

He didn't say anything – his unfaltering gaze did the talking for him.

Éponine averted her eyes. "If you're doing this out of pity-"

"I'm _not,_" he said, his words holding an edge, "and I don't want you to think of it as an apology, either." He paused, noting the way she slipped a cigarette out of her pocket and lit it. She took a few steps back, her shoulders meeting the cold metal wall of the mill.

A gray puff of air left her lips; Enjolras watched it this time. It was most certainly smoke.

"Your company doesn't hold any implications," he finished, which caused something inside her to click. Her wide eyes met his and, suddenly, he found it easier to speak. "You don't owe me."

"And you don't owe _me_," she said. Smoke sputtered through the darkness. She looked away. "Stop being so nice."

"I'm not being nice." His frustration was hard to mask, so instead of focusing it on her, he looked away, too. "You're very difficult."

Éponine laughed, little humor apparent in her tone. "Kind of makes you rethink your whole offer, doesn't it?"

When their eyes met again, there was something different in them – a shift. Enjolras seemed to be searching for her, for the girl who was hidden beneath the mask she wore each day, a mask she only took off when she was too tired to keep it on. That night she made the snowflakes, when she took his hand, as they watched fireworks from the dark window...

_That_ girl seemed different now, though, and he couldn't understand why that was.

"Get in the car," he repeated. "I'm not going to ask you again."

She flicked the butt toward his car, embers still aglow against its white paper, and snorted; when she spoke, her words words dripped with a painful conviction. "You never _asked_ me to begin with! You guys are all the same – tell a girl to do something, think she's going to obey your every command – but guess what? I'm not like the _bourgeois_ girls you know, and I'm _not_ going to get in that car because you told me to!"

Enjolras stopped. It wasn't that he couldn't believe her words, because a part of him had figured this girl, who could be so hostile and, at times, cruel, would act in the way she was. It was her defensive instinct, something he didn't think would ever change so it was better to simply accept it than try and change it.

Although, there was something else there, too – something more than just hostility and defensiveness, something that was alive, something that was eating her up. The way she stepped toward him, the way her usually arched shoulders had fallen, how she pointed a finger at him while it really seemed that she was pointing at herself.

Years ago, he might not have known when to give up, but so much had changed since then and he did not feel like the same man anymore. Now, he knew when to stop fighting. No more reasoning, no more words; Enjolras' hand found the shift and put the car into drive, giving the girl one last look before taking off down the street.

...But it only took a few moments until he saw the girl waving her arms above her head in his rearview window. She was in the street, running toward the car, other vehicles swerving and honking their horns loudly at her as she did so.

He stopped, pulled off to the side of the road, and unlocked the car. She was out of breath in the passenger's seat before he could turn back around to face her.

"Women," Enjolras muttered to himself – now _consumed_ in disbelief. "I will never understand them."

"You should have listened better," Éponine said between heavy breaths as she kicked a foot up on the dash. "I didn't say I wasn't coming – I just said I wasn't getting in your car because _you told me to_. And I'm not – at least, not because you _commanded_ me to, or anything." She paused to catch her breath, as her words seemed to leave her lips faster than she could think. Her chest heaved. "So, where are we going?"

Down the street, the sound of cheering and laughter erupted, and looking once out the back window, Enjolras saw a silhouetted group of men and women, bottles of liquor gripped tightly in their hands, shouting premature wishes of a happy new year to no one but the night.

He swallowed, but didn't speak. Instead, he simply put the car into drive, peeled off down the road, and pushed the exhausting guilt to the back of his mind – if only for a night.

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**Translation:** _Bonne année_ - Happy New Year


	15. Chapter 15 - Gold

A/N: So incredibly sorry for the long wait on this one! I promise I have not been putting it off for a reason, but I had finals last week and have been going-going-going ever since! Hopefully the wait will not be as long for the next chapter, hehe :-)

A special thanks to ChasingYou, your comments really pushed me to get this chapter out. Much love to everyone who leaves a comment, though! You guys are my inspiration half of the time, haha.

I haven't had the chance to look this chapter over for errors, so later it may get edited a little. But I hope you guys like this chapter, it certainly did my heart good to write some joy in these character's lives. Next chapter, we find out the truth of Enjolras' backstory. Also, as another little aside, if you could, listen to "Gold" from the soundtrack of _Once_ as you read this. It inspired the title - such a beautiful song! Anyway, enjoy and let me know what you think!

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**CHAPTER FIFTEEN | GOLD**

Éponine's eyes were wide as Enjolras parked the car at the side of the street, nabbing one of the last unclaimed parking places in the same general vicinity as the Champs-Elysées. The roads and side streets were crowded, and everywhere she turned to look, she was met with another new face.

"I don't get it," she said, sliding out of the car and shutting the door behind her. "Out of _all_ of Paris, _all_ of the places we could have gone, and you come _here_?"

"Apparently it's the place to be," Enjolras said a little sarcastically, though reflected briefly on Dupont's suggestion for New Year's Eve plans. "Not that I need to justify myself or my decisions to you, seeing as how you're the one who agreed to tag along."

He met her at her side and they began walking down the sidewalk. When she couldn't come up with a good enough of an argument, she scoffed. "Well, it's too crowded."

He fought the urge to smirk. "I know."

As they walked down the street, it seemed a strange magnetism was in the air. It was between them and in front of them; like mosquitoes to a bright light, they were compelled to follow the crowd and head toward the epicenter of commotion all the way at the end of the avenue which stretched on for more than a mile.

People eagerly pushed past them, too hurried to find the time for _excuse-me's._ It was starting to annoy Enjolras, particularly how people would shove between the openness between he and Éponine due to their distance. By the time the fourth couple pushed between them, his furrowed brow had become more of an etching as he raised a hand.

"Hey, watch where you're going!" he shouted.

One boy turned back around, his face smudged with something like soot and a green cap perched on his head. He tipped it to Enjolras once before jogging off, weaving through the thickening crowd and disappearing.

Enjolras' hand twitched once as a thought entered his mind, but it took him a moment to act on it. His hand grabbed hers and, though at first came off as forceful, eased soon into woven fingers and palms pressed up against one another.

Though at first startled, Éponine didn't pull away. Something inside her fluttered.

"Are you hungry?" he asked off-handedly, though his eyes were focused on the crowd rather than on her.

Her stomach growled, to which she pressed her free hand. It was a feeling she had grown accustomed to and learned to ignore, even as she would sit alone in her room at night, tracing her xylophone ribcage with her fingertips.

"You aren't going to buy me anything," she said sternly, avoiding the point.

"You don't get to choose," he barked back at her, still fuming from the inconsiderate people bustling at the avenue.

Éponine blinked her eyes open widely in disbelief. His words came sharp, yet smooth – both at once. A tremor of something caught her attention most of all, silencing any rebuttal she had been ready to fire back; it was the sound of that old Enjolras, one she never knew but could sense was hiding somewhere, waiting to leap out. It was something prideful and strong, like a lion.

She didn't speak, and instead pointed to the café just a block down the road. It was pouring with people, and though Enjolras nearly protested due to how busy it was, he stopped himself before sounding hypocritical. Every aspect of the Champs-Elysées on New Year's Eve was busy – what was he expecting?

So he let the girl lead the way into the small, dimly-lit café where they waited fifteen minutes in line just to get a bite and couple drinks. Despite her pride, Éponine insisted they each have a glass of wine with their biscuits, rather than the coffee Enjolras had been eagerly anticipating.

Once again, when he thought of protesting her, Enjolras thought better of it, and he wasn't sure why.

They found two seats at a small table in the back, near the window while still cloaked beneath a hazy shadow. It was better that way.

As soon as they sat down, Éponine began making work of her biscuit. Enjolras quietly watched her as she scarfed it down in record time. When she was done, he didn't think twice before pushing his toward her, which he could tell she nearly refused but was too hungry to object to. She ate his as well, and as soon as she finished, the hungry look in her eyes was gone – the look that was almost animalistic, replaced by a new one that still seemed skittish but was a bit more subdued. Something inside her had been quelled.

The girl shifted in her seat beneath his gaze, which was making her uncomfortable. He quickly averted his eyes.

"So, you spend New Year's alone, too?" Éponine asked.

He shrugged, sensing a twinge of judgement in her tone. "I like to spend most of my time alone."

"So why did you suddenly change your mind?" she quipped. "You would have been alone, too, if I hadn't come along when I did. Got an invitation out of being somewhere at the right place, right time, I suppose."

Enjolras was quiet a moment, taking a gulp of wine before setting it down on the table a little forcefully. His eyes turned upward to meet hers and the intensity of them sent a shiver down her spine. "You didn't just 'come along,'" he said. "I drove to Clamart. To find you."

The room was loud, but somehow seemed silent as the air shifted between them.

Something in his stomach felt heavy, like words waiting to be spoken fighting to stay down. He suddenly didn't want to say anything at all, and wished he hadn't in the first place.

"I wanted to spend New Year's with you," he managed, though quickly added, "but that doesn't really mean anything, so don't go reading into it."

"I won't," Éponine said quickly, then smiled. She took another sip of wine.

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A few glasses of wine later – and by _few_, meaning four – Enjolras and Éponine made their way out into the street with liquor on their breath and a warmth filling their bellies. His hand found hers again, though whether it was to avoid pushy people or for another reason entirely, neither of them were sure. The togetherness was easy though, so they didn't question it.

Their brains were lightly buzzed as they headed down the avenue, the thin brunette laughed loudly. Her throat sounded raw, and to add infliction, she pulled out a cigarette and lit it in her mouth. The smell of it hit Enjolras' nostrils, and though he did not smoke, its scent on the girl seemed somehow endearing.

"These tourists," Éponine sighed wistfully. "They don't know how good they got it. France can be a whole lot darker than these sights, right here."

Enjolras nodded, watching ahead as people posed before a fountain in the square. Their smiles held not an ounce of worry.

"Did you know they used to call this the _'Place de la Révolution'_?" Enjolras mused aloud. When Éponine said nothing, he went on. "In the late 1700s – the French Revolution, during the lower-class oppression and the urge to overthrow the state – the people renamed the Champs-Elysées and gave it that title."

"Wasn't aware," she shrugged. "History really isn't my forte. Certainly wasn't my strongest subject in school."

The man's eyes were lit up now; as they walked, he spewed little-known facts about the history of anything they came across, and it was in these little moments that Éponine saw through him. The veil that seemed to constantly cloak him lifted, and she saw beneath the many fronts he put on. No more hiding, no more disguises, just passion and a real love for something. No matter how long he hid behind careful pleasantries, or how angry he could sometimes be (though she recognized her temper was often more fiery than his) he was still just a man.

Nothing more than that.

"Want me to try and hunt down someone else to take our picture?" Éponine asked smugly, to which he gave her a shove. She laughed again, her smoky breath rising in the air. "Alright, alright, I won't do it again. But someday you're going to wish you had pictures of these times."

"I don't need pictures. The memories are all up here." He tapped his temple twice.

"They will fade," she sighed. "I know many of mine have."

Enjolras was quiet a moment before speaking. "I wish I could say the same."

Éponine's eyes flickered on him. Something was not right. That uneasy feeling she got when he made mention of the past, or when she could tell he was thinking about some grave was suddenly choking her, and though she had every intention of asking what he was so afraid to remember, she couldn't. A strangled breath blew from her lips. She flicked the cigarette butt on the cobblestone ground and tried to clear her thoughts... but this was no easy task.

"Forty minutes to New Year's," she heard a man's loud voice boom nearby.

The girl looked openly up at Enjolras now, and he looked back down at her. "Who would have thought I'd be here with you," she whistled. "I didn't even know who you were until a few days ago."

"It's been more like two weeks," he corrected her gently.

"Yeah, whatever. You barged into my life a little unexpectedly, was all."

"I didn't barge anywhere, _Mademoiselle._ I was there on business and you happened to cross my path."

Éponine smirked. "Like I said, 'barged.'"

Ignoring her, he went on. "You were singing and it caught my attention. That was all."

Suddenly, her eyes went a little wide. "You never said anything about that before." Her voice was barely audible above the loud ruckus around them. "I was singing, and you heard me, and I was a complete and total bitch to you, and you were arrogant..." She trailed off, forgetting her place for a moment, but when she refocused, her words were more pointed. "But the only reason you wanted to ask me for an interview was because I was singing?"

Enjolras shrugged, not looking at her. "You stood out," he said simply.

"No one ever says that about me."

He paused for a moment before giving her hand a little squeeze; her gaze, which had been intently on his face, faltered, and she found his hand instead. Disbelief surged through her.

The words left his mouth before he could stop them.

"You're more than people say you are."

Éponine, ever the wanderer, ever the girl from the slums with the ratty hair and the smokes and the empty feeling in her chest, suddenly felt so full of something – a feeling she couldn't place. A grin spread across her face, but not the goofy kind that comes from jokes an laughter. This was a different kind of grin, which was neither sweet nor soft, but proud.

Yes, suddenly – with Enjolras' hand clutching hers and midnight's edge growing ever-closer – she felt proud to be herself.

And she hadn't felt that way in a long, long time.

xxxxxxxxxx

They wandered the streets until they came to a stop, past the bustling streets flocked by tourists and the agitated people in a hurry to be someplace. They found themselves on the other side of the Champs-Elysées full of trees and careful sidewalks lining either side of the road. Cars were at a standstill, but as the couple looked inside the cars, no one seemed to be unhappy; despite not being where they needed to be as the minutes ticked away to midnight, they appeared content to be exactly where they were.

"1968," Éponine thought aloud. "Hope this one's better than the last."

"Agreed."

She sniffed. "But, you know, even if it _is_ as bad as the last – as I feel as though most of it will be the same – I think I might be ready for it."

"And why is that?" Enjolras asked.

"I'm not going to say it – it's cheesy."

Enjolras smirked. "Perhaps it is better unsaid then."

"Perhaps."

Suddenly, a loud chorus began to fill the night – a chant, off in the distance that somehow seemed so near. As soon as the sound hit her ears, Éponine began to chime in as well.

She paused between each call to nudge the man beside her with her elbow. "You better do it too."

"Why?"

"Because it isn't New Year's unless you do," she said matter-of-factly, then went back to the counting. "_Douze, onze, dix..._"

Enjolras watched her for only a moment longer before caving. The way she seemed so entranced in the world around her, controlled by it yet somehow controlling it, gave him a feeling that went on and on – resounding, perpetual, and constant.

"_Neuf, huit, sept..._" they said together.

Éponine smiled brighter than the stars in that same pinhole sky Enjolras used to hate, the one that he would lie awake in because of how hard it was to forget – that he sometimes _still_ hated. But tonight, if _only_ for tonight, he could set the visions of gunfire and anguish and death aside, and hold the hand of this girl who he was finally beginning to know. Even if she didn't always make sense, it didn't matter, because neither did he.

"_Six, cinq, quatre..._"

Her whole body tensed; he could feel it beneath his grip. Enjolras straightened, waiting with moving lips, saying the words that everyone else in Paris was saying at that very moment.

"_Trois, deux, un..._"

And then, there was continuum; forever in a moment, these two wandering souls found something they could both hold on to, something that could belong to them that they didn't have to chase after.

Then came an eruption of hollering and joy and everything good. Enjolras looked down at Éponine whose eyes squinted from her laughter, and he couldn't help but do the same. His teeth showed, little white rivets against a pair of pink lips.

She had never seen him smile so wide.

"Would you like one?" Éponine asked, though she had to shout to be heard.

"What?" he shouted back, leaning downward to catch her voice better.

She shook her head. "I said, 'would you like one?'"

Enjolras felt stupid, causing his brow to furrow as an agitation kicked in. His smile faded. "Would I like one of what?"

"Of these," she replied – and as she raised herself on tiptoes, she pecked the man once on the side of his mouth, halfway between his cheek and the center of his lips caused by a stumble. Éponine lost her balance, and despite his complete confusion, Enjolras managed to collect his thoughts well enough to stop her from completely toppling into his chest.

His hands were on her shoulders, steadying her from falling again, and with his face so close to hers, that surge of joy ran through her again. Something inside her faltered when she saw his smile return.

Enjolras' eyes - usually marble - were alight with a wonderstruck confusion and his smile returned. The resolve he usually held against any sort of momentary joy melted away, and upon thinking on this a moment, he realized that when he looked at her, he didn't much care.

"_Bonne année, _Éponine," was all he said before straightening again and starting to walk back in the direction they had come from.

She bit her lower lip to stop her smile from spreading, and before he could get too far, she sped forward and caught his arm in hers, linking them both as they walked together down the sidewalk.

"_Bonne année, _Enjolras."

And although everything seemed real, Éponine caught herself wishing it didn't – for her own sake.


	16. Chapter 16 - Impossibilities

A/N: It's official, I'm the worst updater ever! I'm so sorry that this chapter took me so long to write, but I promise I have not forgotten about this story. In fact, I'm already hard at work on chapter seventeen. Also, I'm sorry if this chapter does not fulfill what I told you all I would include in this chapter, because I had to add a few more scenes in between last chapter and the introduction of Enjolras' backstory. It is coming soon though, I promise you. I just want to do it in the right way. Anyway, I hope you still like this chapter! :-)

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**CHAPTER SIXTEEN | IMPOSSIBILITIES**

On New Year's Eve, Éponine did not stay with Enjolras at his apartment. The money that jingled in her pocket as they walked back down the Champs-Elysées was a steady reminder that she was the proverbial Cinderella, forced to return home before the night was through or else her father would have her head.

When Enjolras inquired as to why she needed to be driven home, she simply said she was too tired.

Part of him didn't believe that, but part of him didn't believe a lot of what he heard come out of Éponine's mouth. He just didn't have the nerve to ask – despite how strong the urge to be her confidant was, especially lately. But he was still too proud to ask, so far gone in solitude that he felt there was no retreating.

Although it sometimes helped him forget, her company was not staple-gunned, and when it came to this manic, attitude-stricken woman, nothing was ever certain.

Éponine got out of the car, the money in her pocket growing heavier with each passing moment. _You really owe him this time Éponine,_ her mind hissed. _This money shouldn't be for you, or your family. Even if he doesn't need it, he has done so much for you to deserve some deeper form of thanks – and if you don't leave it with him, you're just selfish._

But she _was_ selfish, and angry, and crude, and sometimes mean-spirited. That was every bit of who Éponine was, right down to her very core; the world was a cruel place, and because she had experienced so much of its cruelty, she had become knowingly cruel – at least, some of the time. So when she closed the car door and allowed Enjolras a small wave goodbye – even after he gave her a short nod and pulled away – she didn't feel unbearingly guilty.

It was two in the morning. _It's not too late,_ she thought, especially after seeing the cars in the driveway and the lights still on inside the house. This could only mean that everyone was over for New Year's – probably celebrating a night's worth of pick-pocketing with splendored treasures beyond compare, including a fine pocket watch or a heavy wallet with francs to spare.

As usual, Éponine headed in the backdoor and tried to sneak past everyone, though it was in her interest to avoid one man in particular.

_Just put the money on the table quickly and head to bed,_ she instructed herself, going through the motions as she silently tugged the francs from her pocket, giving her best attempt of "silent" as she possibly could.

Of course, she hadn't been so lucky as to have been blessed with tact and grace; four coins slipped between her cupped hands and fell to the floor, alerting Madame Thénardier in the living room.

"Oh! There's my girl!" she cat-called as she saw her daughter emptying her pockets on the kitchen table. She stood with one arm around her husband and the other coddling a tall bottle of vodka, which she then lifted to Éponine and began to toast. "To our girl – 'Ponine – who does what she do to keep our family fed!"

"Here, here!" a chorus came.

Despite how drunk she knew her mother was, Éponine couldn't help but let a ghost of a smile graze her lips. It wasn't out of happiness, the kind she had beamed that night when out with Enjolras in the heart of Paris, but a grateful one. She was grateful for her mother's drunkenness, grateful for the fact that her father was being entertained by his friends, and grateful that no one seemed to realize the time.

As her eyes scanned the room, a pair caught hers – dark ones – and she shivered.

She didn't have to say anything. Instead, she rushed to her room and shut the door tightly, gripping at the collar of her shirt, whizzing through thoughts in her head so fast she grew a headache.

_I don't want to do this,_ her body begged her. She shut her eyes and waited for the door to creak open, to see _him_ standing there with his silhouette dark against the harsh yellow light in the hall. The door creaked as it closed behind him.

"Montparnasse," Éponine said, trying to smile with her voice but failing miserably. "_Bonne année_."

He didn't reply at first, and instead moved to where she was, near the bed, still standing. His stance seemed frigid, and she couldn't tell if it was only her imagination or if he was as furious as he seemed.

"You were with him again."

At his words, a chill spread throughout the room. Any words she might have spoken were silenced as he took a slow step forward, then another, and another.

"Don't lie to me this time," he said between clenched teeth. "I'm not to be made a fool. You know I'm not an idiot – I can read between the lines well enough."

Éponine took a deep breath. "We're just friends."

"Bullshit!"

"Oh, please." She rolled her eyes now, her silence replaced with annoyance. She stood and circled around him to the other side of the room. "You're reading too far into it. We are friends and nothing more."

Montparnasse shook his head, yet could not keep quiet this time. "New Year's with 'just friends.' Rides home with 'just friends.' Thought you were in love with that other one. Marlin."

"_Marius,_" she hissed through clenched teeth. Her chest ached to speak his name, but for some reason, she thought back to Enjolras instead, and how offended he would be to know that Montparnasse spoke of their friendship in such a crude manner as this.

"Well forget about them," the man warned. "They're just boys."

"No older than you."

"I might as well be older than them!" he snapped. "I've seen more than they'll ever see, done more than they've done, proved myself to everyone – including your father!"

Éponine was quiet a moment before whispering something to herself.

"What was that, girl?"

She turned her eyes to meet his again with a renewed sharpness that had not been there before. "I said," she spoke, "you must be very proud."

He rolled his eyes, then took a seat on her bed. "I might have blood on my hands, but at least there's money in my pockets. Don't you see that? I do what I do to keep us together, to keep us alive."

Éponine stopped, nearly biting her tongue – which she should have done. "You paid me to suck your cock. You think your money will keep us together?"

"If it's the only thing that does," he said, standing again and starting toward her, "then it must be so."

His breath was warm on her face, and as she stood against the wall, her shoulderblades taught, chin raised, and eyebrows cinched together, she felt his hand on her waist.

"No."

Montparnasse moved it downward, hooking his thumb in the loop of her pants. His mouth went for her neck and he sucked – hard. His saliva was still on her numb skin as she pressed both hands to her chest and shoved him just as hard.

"Don't touch me."

He stood in complete disbelief. "What the hell has happened to you? A pretty boy shows you affection and suddenly you're too good for me, is it?"

"It isn't like that, I told you." Her mouth felt dry and a sinking feeling hogged her stomach.

"Then what _is_ it like, Éponine? You've changed. I'm not an idiot." He paused, fury hot in his throat. His lips turned downward and in one sudden motion, he punched the wall.

Éponine's heart stopped.

"What do they have that I don't?" he snarled. "What keeps you running from me when I can give you everything?"

The room was silent. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end and she could feel a familiar sensation rising in her throat. _You need fresh air,_ she thought desparately.

"You're just like my father," she breathed, eyelashes lacing shut. Words that had haunted her for a long time came spewing out and she couldn't stop them. If this was the night it would be said, she needed to spill it. "I'll be damned to live a life, afraid of what you'll do. That blood on your hands might buy you a life so frivalous you can afford not to be on the streets, where you can afford to cover your tracks, where you can buy my body and these nights I give you."

Her eyes opened again, and for a moment, Montparnasse thought he saw tears in them.

Her jaw tightened. "But I will not live a life like my mother's. I won't turn out like her. I won't be part of this any more."

"You are _weak,_" he spat, and at these words – as they sunk in and scarred her already darkened soul – those tears filled her eyes and glazed them in a bright white sheen.

But he didn't stop there – he had to keep digging. She deserved to feel like this.

His words crashed down on her with a haunting severity.

"Your sister was weak too, and someday, you'll wind up just like her. You're going to be living out there, on your own, because _no one will ever love you_ – because you're _filthy_. You said it yourself: you sold your love to me, so you deserve to live like she did. You'll be a streetwalker. You'll die alone. You will never be like one of those rich boys you fancy so well; you'll never have rich clothes, you'll never live in an apartment in the city.

"You'll be a rat that cowers in the shadows, taking up space and poisoning the earth with your infections and diseases... Good for nothing, not an ounce of specialness about you. You're just another fleck of wasted space."

Montparnasse spat on the floor near her feet.

"I'm done with this," he decided. "You aren't worth a single franc to me." And with those final words, the man who could look so composed and proper and beautiful pulled his mask off and revealed that darkness Éponine had always known was there, but had never truly seen. Not until that moment, anyway, and even after he had left the room and her breathing returned to normal, she still stood in utter shock.

_Good riddance,_ she thought bitterly, wiping at her eyes. _I don't need you to be my savior. I don't need you to buy me, keep me fed with your empty love, then write me off as just another girl. There is nothing I need less._

Éponine took one deep breath and sighed.

Out her bedroom window, she shimmied herself out before shutting it tightly behind her. She would not stand to be in the same house as that man – if she could call him that – and would rather freeze on the streets.

So she did – another night, another alleyway. As she hid herself between a chainlink fence and a filthy, old dumpster, she thought of the man in the alleyway near her house, the homeless one who had always asked for money. He had frozen and starved and somehow stayed alive through the biting winter chill.

_If he can do it, so can I._

She then thought of Enjolras' flat, and the warmth of his fireplace on Christmas Eve. Wine glasses, movies, laughter, comfort. It felt so easy there with him, not worrying about whether or not she would be fed, not worrying if the money she made at the factory – the one which worked her fingers to the bone – would be enough to get her through the week. With Enjolras, she didn't have to worry about anything.

But it wasn't the thought of the comforts of his home that put her to sleep that night, as oftentimes it did when she thought of Marius. It wasn't the pleasantries he could give her, the stability he could offer her, or any of the material things he represented to her.

It was instead the way he looked at her that very night, with that smile she hardly ever saw on him, the one he tried to hide away in the recesses of his spirit.

And the feeling of his cheek as she missed his lips.

_My dear friend, wherever you are,_ Éponine thought softly as she drifted off into a lonely, shivering sleep, _I am grateful you are there – and not here._

xxxxxxxxxx

Enjolras flicked on the light as he entered his apartment, closing the door behind him gently as he slid off his shoes and made his way across the floor. He fell onto the couch with a loud _poomf_ and closed his eyes.

It had been a strange night, indeed.

Tomorrow he would head back to work and continue that story about the joggers who treked across Europe twice, and start gathering interviews about those people who had made a deer their pet and were reunited with it after they released it years ago. He would go to the grocery store and get more fruit, some more whole wheat bread, and cat food.

And perhaps some more wine, too.

His eyes opened a fraction as the sound of meowing could be heard from his bedroom. At first he thought to simply ignore the cat, because the sound was probably nothing, but after the intermittent meowing continued on for five minutes, he decided to get up and see what all the commotion was about.

When he opened the already-cracked door to his bedroom, he found Petit on the ground playing with something. Whatever it was, it was small and black, and somehow elastic; it caught on the cat's foot and it tugged, meowing once again as it fell onto its back in a dramatic leap.

"What..." Enjolras thought aloud, picking the cat up with one hand (realizing then how large the cat was getting and making a mental note to get the leaner cat food when at the store the next day). He struggled with Petit to grab whatever it was he was playing with out of his hands when it suddenly flopped to the floor.

His eyes landed on it, in all its circular glory.

A hairtie.

In a slight huff, the blonde tossed his cat out of the bedroom – much to Petit's anguish – and walked back toward the item slowly. Then, he took a seat.

It was a strange occurrence to find such a thing in his home, something that did not belong to him and was very foreign in nature. It was feminine, and appeared upon further inspection to be more of a makeshift hairtie than something one might find at a store. It was a rubber band covered in cloth, though it seemed to have been broken once and tied into a tight knot again, which was then melted and sealed with heat to keep from coming undone.

Here in his solitude, he smiled to himself. This girl, who seemed at first a firey factory girl (and was _still_ that same girl), was so different than any other he had ever known. Not that he had known many women, or perhaps any that he considered close enough to know, but he felt confidently that there were none quite as crafty and stubborn and _impossible_ as she was.

Impossible to dislike, it would seem, for as he held this poor excuse for a hairtie in his hands, she glowed in his mind like an undying flame. This was how he saw her.

This was how she oftentimes did not see herself.

He tucked the hairtie in his nightstand, neatly on top of a dozen old journals from years ago. Something new amongst something old.

Enjolras closed the drawer and took a deep breath.

_Something old._ He lowered himself flatly to the floor, his arms stretching under the bed as he searched for it blindly. _Something I haven't looked at in such a long time. Something that I couldn't get rid of if I wanted to._

His fingertips grazed its wooden surface and soon found the metal handle. He dragged and dragged and dragged, until the heavy object resurfaced from its place in shadow.

Enjolras blew on the lid and ran a single finger along the inlaid carving on its front.

The box.

Looking twice in either direction out of instinct, he paused before opening it. Then, as his eyes landed upon its polished varnish, and as the dust settled in the room once again, he found the hard, metal clasp and twisted it roughly to the right.

_I never forgot,_ he thought as his chest began to ache. _For as long as I live, I will never allow myself to forget what happened that night._


End file.
